The Tomorrow Knight: Vagabonds
by CDrake
Summary: In the sequel to Origins, the Knight is in for the fight of his life against an ancient enemy never vanquished. To save the family he returned for and prevent the future he most fears, he must draw strength from wherever it is found. Where better than the Vagabonds who choose to stand beside him?
1. Vagabond Origins: Blue Lantern

The darkness of the room was not complete, but damn close. Only the faintest scraps of light streamed in from small, tinted windows running the length of the walls nearest the ceiling. The only other disruption of the otherwise-pervasive gloom were the periodic flickers of light emanating from the palm of a blond man standing off in a corner. Dressed in a gray trenchcoat that came down to his shins, he tossed a ball of candle-like flame between his hands, twirling it between his fingers as his amber eyes flickered with the firelight. That flame vanished when he heard the faintest hum of vibrations on the far side of the rectangular room.

Those vibrations intensified more and more over the course of a second, reaching a fever pitch when a faint _snap_ echoed through the chamber as space itself warped as if in the grip of a black hole. Amber-eyes knew better, and turned toward the source of the disturbance as a battered man in golden-blue armor emerged from the rift. Amber-eyes chuckled softly, mockingly, as the armored newcomer stomped toward him with clenched fists.

"I warned you that the spawn of Diana was not to be trifled with."

The newcomer's golden eyes flashed with anger for the briefest of moments as he glared at the speaker. "I did not _trifle_." He took a breath and calmed a moment later, at least on the outside, when he continued his reply. "The extent of his power surprised me, that is all."

"Imagine that," amber-eyes scoffed. "Damn near six months of stalking your target, and he still managed to outflank you. You should have taken my advice and struck sooner than later, before he had time to adjust."

The other's eyes narrowed. "You know as well as I do that his allies would have rallied to him in force."

"That didn't stop you last time."

"Because I was unexpected. By the time Jason lost his powers, the Decembrists were already known to Wayne and his associates. Besides, fighting an old man and a wife burdened by guilt is quite different than fighting those two in their prime."

He snorted. "A human and his pet Amazon, you mean."

Janus arched a taunting eyebrow and set his tone to match. "As I recall, that 'pet Amazon' bested _you_ on _multiple_ occasions." His lips pressed into a thin line. "And only a _fool_ would underestimate the Batman."

A snarl was the other's only response. "Yet for all that, your caution gained you no advantage in the end."

"The end? You act as if this will be our only opportunity."

"No, but it was _the_ prime opportunity, to strike before you yourself were known to them. Now, they will be ever more on alert."

Janus glared. "Spare me the lecture."

"I do not lecture," replied the other, arms crossed. "Only point out the obvious. Your tactics failed. Now we do things my way."

"And what, pray tell, made you think that was your decision to make? This is not a democracy, Ares."

The god of war snarled and took a step toward him. "No, it isn't, and I wasn't asking permission."

The two engaged in a brief stare-down before Janus waved dismissively and stepped past him. "Very well, have your fun. While you soak the soil and sand of this world with gratuitous bloodletting, _I_ will be fighting the battles that will win us the war. I always seemed to be better at that bit, despite your arrogantly chosen title." He stopped short and smirked, looking over his shoulder at Ares. "Perhaps that's why Zeus always favored me over you."

Eyes smoldering and flickering with red, Ares took a threatening step toward him, growling his reply. "If that were true, he would've cast _me_ out."

Janus stepped right back, smiling venomously. "In case you've forgotten history, he _did_."

Ares stared him down again for a while before the red flecks faded from his eyes. "Enough. Even I know when a fight is pointless." He sneered. "But the next time you doubt my power or ability, remember that _you_ came to _me_ for help."

Janus' eyes narrowed as he got up in Ares' face, his slightly shorter form nevertheless causing Ares to tense up. "And the next time you think to question my tactics or authority, _you _should remember that I saved you from a fate worse than death. This is not me asking you for a favor. This is _you_ repaying the debt you owe." He drew even closer, hissing in his ear as the god of war gulped uneasily. "I could just as easily return you to your endless torment in the void." His golden eyes narrowed, glowing faintly in the low light. "So, do not _test_ me, Ares." Janus stepped back, waving toward the far end of the room. "Go, do as you wish, but remember: you are a distraction, nothing more.

"Now leave me. I have work to do."

Bristling at being so utterly dismissed, Ares nevertheless backed away with the smallest bow of the head and vanished in a swirl of blood and fire.

…

"So that's not one of his abilities?"

The gray-eyed woman frowned and shook her head. "That armor was a gift from Hephaestus, forged of a rare symbiotic metal that obeys the will of its wearer once the two are bonded." She flipped a page on the ancient-looking tome in her hands, angling it to show the boy speaking with her. "Your modern science calls it 'Element X.'"

Jason Wayne nodded slowly, tracing a finger over the spiral shape on the belt section of the armor's diagram. "That explains how he could reconfigure it so quickly on the fly. What's up with this symbol, though? He wore a different one when I fought him; an hourglass."

Athena nodded with a frown. "The armor shifts with the power and headspace of its wearer. That change would've happened after he defeated Kronos."

"I see. What about that time-warp ability? Honestly, that's the most concerning bit. He doesn't seem to be able to exert it over very much distance or large areas."

"For the full stop effect you described, perhaps, but faint alterations to his own timescale give him much of his great speed at little cost to his focus or stamina."

"Kind of like a speedster."

Athena nodded. "Precisely, except they can only ever affect their own relativity. Janus has the potential to affect that of an entire city, at least with a partial slow effect, like flies in honey." She frowned. "I once saw Kronos do just that to a convoy of humans who allied with us."

Jason's blue eyes widened. "Then why didn't he just freeze me and Cass and take us both out?"

"I honestly couldn't tell you. Janus wasn't around long once he gained Kronos' abilities, so I had very little time to observe the extent of his new power."

"And what about the 'two faces?'"

"The what?"

"In myth, Janus is always reported as having two faces: one looking into the past, one into the future."

"Ah, yes." Athena rolled her eyes in irritation. "That, young one, is something of a misnomer. A closer word would be 'aspect.' From birth, Janus had the gift of allsight, capable of gazing anywhere he knew of in the _Multiverse_ at the present point in time. Once he absorbed Kronos' sphere of reality, that ability expanded into two main aspects: the 'future face' and the 'past face.' He could still gaze across space, but that power was no longer limited to the present moment."

Jason gaped at her. "He can look across all of time."

She nodded slowly. "Now, I'm not sure if what he sees is what _will_ happen or merely what _could_ happen, but his precognition will no doubt make surprising him damn near impossible."

"Then how was it I was able to outpace him once I got my powers back? Because I know for a fact that he didn't let me win that time."

Athena frowned. "I cannot say. Perhaps he is not aware of the entire timeline, but only the moment and context he chooses to focus on." She closed the tome and set it aside. "Perhaps the limits of his abilities are not as extensive as I have long believed; I have little data one way or the other."

"Lack of constant awareness would explain how he was able to beat Kronos, at least."

"True."

Jason sighed and leaned back in his seat. "I guess I should just be grateful that I haven't done anything to piss offthe Janus in _this_ time. One is bad enough."

Athena frowned. "I'm afraid it doesn't work quite that way."

He blinked. "What do you mean?"

"As god of time, Janus exists both within the timeline and outside it. Only one version of him will ever be present, yet at once his influence can be felt wherever—and whenever—he chooses to go."

Jason blinked rapidly, shaking his head. "That makes absolutely no sense."

Athena sighed and picked up the tome, holding it so the sides of the pages faced him. "The flow of time is like this book, and we are but a single point traveling through the pages." She held her fingernail at the top of the rearmost page, then slowly dragged it downward as the pages flipped past in a flurry. "With each turn, we travel further along in time, but Janus…" she lifted her finger from the edge and tossed the tome down, "Janus exists _outside_ the book. He only ever manifests where he chooses."

"So…plus side, I'll never have to deal with past versions of him."

"And on the minus, every time you encounter him, past, present, or future; he will always be the oldest and most knowledgeable version."

Jason frowned. "So…what about changing future events that he took part in? Does that mean it's impossible?"

Athena blinked. "Not at all." She sighed hard, frowning. "How do I explain…Janus…well, from what I understand about _Kronos_, a god of time can transplant himself into the past or future, but only mentally so. Thus, Kronos could know our battle plans ahead of time, but would be limited by distance and reach in how he could affect the outcome. Janus' dominion over gateways nullifies this limitation, allowing him to move his mind and past or future body at will. However, if his past body were to be slain, those future events would no doubt succumb to the resulting paradox and cease to exist."

Jason's lips twitched with the slightest of smiles. "Then my mission hasn't changed." He couldn't help catching her frown. "Even you admitted that he may be too far gone."

"And yet I would still kill him only as a last resort," her gray eyes narrowed, "whereas you seem intent on making that your go-to."

He met her glare evenly. "You haven't seen what he's capable of now. Whoever that person was, the one you still hold respect for?" He snarled and stood. "He's gone."

Athena, frowning, shook her head. "If that is true, I have little doubt _we_ are responsible." She stared into the distance. "Very well, do as you see fit. It isn't like I have much choice in the matter."

Jason winced and sighed, mentally kicking himself. "Look…I'm sorry. You've been very helpful and…overall the friendliest Olympian I've ever met. But I didn't come back to this time for my health; I came back to save my parents, and if killing that bastard is the only way…"

At _that_, her gray eyes flashed with silvery fire. "He is _not_ a bastard," she growled.

He arched a raven eyebrow and crossed his arms. "I'm sorry, did Uranus marry your sister and no one tell me?"

"…"

"Then technically, yes, he _is_ a bastard."

The fire slowly faded from her eyes, though she still glared at the boy. "Your coy attempts at salvaging your not-so-veiled insult are not as amusing as you think."

His eyebrows shot skyward. "Janus wasn't just a friend to you, was he?"

Athena turned her nose up at him. "Unlike most of my kin, I remember what it means to have family…and _treasure_ them."

Jason's lips pursed. He doubted very much that that was all she meant but decided not to press the issue. "Fair enough." He looked off into the distance, taking in the empty void peppered with floating stone and statues. "It's a moot point for now, anyway. We still don't know enough about him or his operations to move against him. Plus there's the issue of finding him in the first place."

"Knowing Janus, _he_ will find _you_ when he is ready."

"Yeah," he sighed. "That's what I'm afraid of."

"Keep close to your allies and you'll be fine." Athena made to stand, but winced and let out the slightest hiss of pain mid-movement.

Jason noticed. "Whoa, you okay?"

She smiled politely, but he could see the edge of pain in her eyes. "Yes, I'm fine."

He frowned. "You're an unsurprisingly remarkable liar, Athena, but don't insult my intelligence by lying when I already know the answer."

Athena stared at him for a moment before she let her smile fade. "It's just something I have to deal with. Nothing that should concern you."

He kept staring.

"You have what you came for," she said firmly, meeting his gaze with a glare. "Go home and rest, you will need it."

"Know that for a fact, do you?"

A frown creased her features. "I may not have Janus' allsight, but I do have the gift of farsight."

He arched questioning eyebrows.

"Probabilities," she explained. "By taking in the various facts of a situation, I can project any number of possible outcomes and their relative likelihoods. Your situation is…perilous, to say the least. Best to keep up your strength as much as possible."

"…right." He glanced at her left side, opposite the right that she seemed to be favoring. "I'll be back if I have any more questions."

Athena gave him a curt nod. "Of course. Safe travels, Jason Wayne."

"Athena, always a pleasure."

…

There was slightly less warmth in their parting than their first meeting, yet Jason attributed that to their…disagreement over Janus' fate. Still, if she expected the one compassionate Olympian he'd ever met to be able to change his mind about the man who murdered his parents in two short conversations, she would be sorely disappointed. Especially since he now knew he would never encounter a version of him that _hadn't_ done what he'd done. What worried him more, despite how little he knew the woman, was that flash of pain she'd expressed right before he returned to his body.

Athena was hiding something, and in an effort to stop him from worrying lied about it. He would have to ask Hippolyta or his mother about it when he had the chance. The queen had barely batted an eyelash when he returned a few days after his last visit, merely waved him toward the astral chamber and given her guards strict instructions not to allow anyone interrupt him. Then sidled off to perform her queenly duties elsewhere. It almost felt…normal now, to have Amazon soldiers waiting on him. Part of that no doubt came from growing up as Gotham royalty, but it hadn't quite hit him until then that he was _actual_ royalty.

Given the preoccupied look on his grandmother's face when she left the palace with her bodyguards, he doubted she'd be up for a conversation if he managed to track her down. Instead, he made his way toward the island's library, the massive building looming just next door to the palace at large. A few not-so-subtle stares were directed at him, but no one made any obvious moves to impede his movement across the square. The archivist, a blonde woman with streaks of black in her hair, gave him a long, inquisitive look when he stepped through the doors.

"Can I help you?" she asked.

Jason thought for a second or two. "Uh…yes. I'd like to know where I can find any records on Janus or Element X." He winced a bit. "I'm…not sure what you would call it."

She waved dismissively and rose from her seat. "It is no trouble; as archivist and historian of the Amazons, it is my duty to keep apprised of current languages and developments."

She directed another wave at her desk, which he noticed bore a device that seemed altogether out of place with the otherwise ancient building: an iPad, and a _recent_ model at that.

"No shit," Jason whispered. "How do you even connect to the 'Net out here?"

"The same way the queen speaks to her daughter using that device in the palace," she replied.

Jason shook his head slowly as he followed her through the endless stacks of books and scrolls. "I'm sorry, where are my manners? I'm Jason." He stuck out his hand.

The archivist arched an eyebrow at him and his hand, then tentatively shook it. "Penelope."

"A pleasure. Mind if I call you Penny?"

She shot him a confused look.

He shrugged. "It's shorter, and a lot easier to say."

Penelope sighed and shrugged. "I suppose. You are the prince, after all."

Jason snorted. "Ah, that doesn't matter to me. I'm a Prince, maybe, but not a prince."

She stared at him uncomprehendingly.

"You know…'cause of my mom's maiden name…you know what? Never mind."

Penny's eyebrows rose slightly. "Ah. I see. You have an unusual sense of humor, Prince Jason."

That _immediately_ caused his stomach to roll about a bit. "Ugh, no."

"Hm?"

"Do not _ever_ call me that again. It irritates me enough interacting with the sycophants at school without being addressed with that title."

Penny stopped and stared at him, offended. "That is what you are, however unusual it is for a male to be Amazon royalty—or Amazon at all. I would hardly consider it flattery to address you as such."

Jason frowned and sighed. "I know, I know, but I'm not in the habit of seeing myself above others in anything but geography, so…could you drop it please?" When she continued staring at him, he frowned. "Consider it an order."

Penny bowed her head slightly. "As you wish." She waved toward an aisle between two tall bookshelves. "Please, follow me. Queen Hippolyta warned me that you might stop by for just such a query—regarding Janus, that is. She never mentioned this 'Element X.'"

"That's 'cause I just learned about its relevance today. Apparently, Janus has a whole suit of armor made of the stuff, and I need to know what I'm dealing with. I've already seen some of its capabilities, but I'm quickly learning how ignorant I am of this guy."

The archivist frowned deeply. "A full suit, you say?" Her head shook. "Not good."

"Yeah?"

"Io, our weapons-mistress, would know more about its specific capabilities, but from the little I've read, Element X is an extremely rare and powerful substance, known to us as the 'fire of the Fourth World.'"

Jason's eyes flashed in recognition. "Fourth World…I've heard that term before."

Penny nodded gravely. "This is how we refer to New Genesis and Apokolips, the domains of the New Gods."

"_Oh_. Athena told me E-X could transform into just about anything once bonded to a wearer, and I saw Janus use it to form various melee weapons on the fly without sacrificing any of the armor's protection."

"I'm afraid there's much more to it than that. Element X is both substance and power, the core of Fourth World tools such as the Mother and Father boxes. Additionally, it can greatly augment the power of the wearer and allow them a certain amount of precognition, if used properly."

Jason's eyebrows attempted to meet his hairline. "As if he _needed_ to get any more powerful."

"Given Janus' abilities," she said, pulling a thick book off one of the shelves, "I believe it would serve as more of a limiter, a means of keeping his abilities in check. Influencing time and space are no small matters, as I'm sure you well know. Element X would certainly help to refine control of such abilities."

"That would make sense, given what Athena said about him being the youngest. Still, that's one more part of his arsenal that I can't hope to match, and he's had the better part of an eon to master using it."

"True." Penny pulled another two volumes off separate shelves, tucking all three under her left arm as she kept searching. "Unfortunately, there are few records of Janus himself, thanks to his rather lackluster place in Olympus' pantheon."

"I think you mean nonexistent."

She frowned. "True, Janus never gained a cult following of his own, but time is not something one typically considers as something that actively needs changing, as opposed to weather or crops."

"I suppose I should be grateful that no one worships him; the way Olympian powers work, it would only make him stronger."

Penny nodded, falling silent as she pulled one more tome off the racks, then escorted Jason to an open area in the center of the building that was dedicated to study. By the look on her face, they were both surprised to find that this area was already occupied. A familiar redhead looked up at the sound of their approach, blinking rapidly and quickly thumping the book in her hands closed. To Jason's surprise, the book didn't look that old.

"Yes?" asked Artemis of Bana-Mighdall, her tone a little hostile.

Penny frowned inquisitively. "Why so defensive, Artemis?"

The redheaded Amazon glared. "I prefer my reading time to be as uninterrupted as possible."

"Ah," Penny intoned with a coy smile. She waved to the boy observing Artemis with an amused glint in his eye. "This is Pr—er, Jason Wayne. He will be studying here from time to time."

"I know who you are," Artemis directed at Jason. "I was sparring with Kara Zor-El when you dueled Philippus, saw the whole thing."

Jason noticeably grimaced. "Not one of my proudest moments."

Artemis gave him a feral grin. "On the contrary, that curmudgeon _needed _to be taken down a notch." She gave him a near-mocking golf clap. "Well done."

Penny coughed into her hand after laying down the stack of books. "I'll leave you to it."

Jason glanced at his unusual company, trying to make out the title of the book in her hands. However, she seemed to be particularly insistent on preventing him—or anyone—from finding out.

_Curious…_

He sat down next to the book-stack, finding himself surprised once again to see sticky notes serving as bookmarks in most of the tomes. Gravitating to those pages, he found several relevant entries on Kronos and a few on Janus himself bracketed or highlighted, and mentally thanked his grandmother for her foresight. After a few minutes of silent reading, he took another glance at Artemis and managed to spy the title of her book. He nearly erupted into cackles a second later, managing to restrain it to a small snort.

Artemis directed a fierce green-eyed glare at him. "_What_?"

He quickly schooled his features into something resembling neutrality, though his eyes still glimmered with mirth. "Nothing, just surprised to see a title that _recent_ sitting in a library this old."

Her eyes narrowed dangerously. "Not a _word_, Jason Wayne."

"About what?" he asked teasingly. "Why on Earth would I tell anyone that you're reading sappy romance novels?" Jason finally let his grin show. "Especially when it's such effective blackmail material?"

Artemis' glare intensified. "You wouldn't dare."

"We get along, I won't have to." He returned to his reading a moment later, his disgruntled company gradually doing the same. Taking a few notes down on his phone, he sighed and stretched out a few minutes later, taking a break. "I'm surprised you're still here."

"Think I find your company that annoying, do you?"

He chuckled. "No, I mean on Themyscira. Your sisters back home have to be missing their star fighter."

Artemis frowned and flipped the book closed. "True, and I miss them as well. However, there are a number of reasons why it would be…unwise to go back now. Namely, the current political situation in Qurac and Bialya."

Jason's eyebrows rose.

"We are not blind to what is happening in the world, and that kind of upheaval so close to home makes any return trip…perilous."

"I thought Bana-Mighdall was insulated from the rest of the world, like Themyscira."

"It is, true, but an island cloaked from vision in the middle of nowhere is slightly different than a city in the desert shielded by a perpetual sandstorm. One is bound to have significantly more traffic and watching eyes than the other."

Jason nodded slowly. "And the appearance of a third powerful player in an already-unstable climate could exacerbate the situation."

"Precisely."

"…that's…surprisingly well thought-out."

She shot him a look. "Excuse me?"

He threw his hands up calmingly. "It's just that you sounded a bit more hotheaded from what I've heard."

"Oh?" Her arms crossed. "From whom?"

"Well…Red, mostly."

"Red?"

Jason blinked. "Right. The Red Hood, my adoptive brother. In my time, you two are old friends." He smirked. "Always said you were a passionate spitfire."

Artemis thought for a moment, shrugging. "An apt description, I'll admit. How do I and this 'Red' supposedly meet?"

He smiled and wagged a finger at her. "Nice try, Arty. You know better than to ask me that."

She gave him a flat look. "Don't call me that."

"Well I gotta come up with _something_. Artemis is way too many syllables for regular use."

"Shut up, Wayne."

He chuckled and returned to his studies. "Okay."

…

Cassandra Cain was _bored_.

Typically, her patience was all-encompassing and enduring to depths that amazed even her adoptive father. However, at this point, it was all she could do not to constantly gripe about being hemmed away from the Batcave or out of the gym. She was fine, really. Her injuries were healed, for the most part, and certainly the most severe ones had faded to virtually nothing thanks to Jason's Nth-metal gift. But Diana was an appallingly effective mother hen, and Bruce was even worse. A large part of her loved and treasured that side of her parents, especially given how her biological parents had treated her during childhood.

At the moment, it just irritated the crap out of her.

Even _Jason _wouldn't help her get back in the game, though she couldn't find it in herself to be surprised, since she still saw guilt in his eyes every time he looked at her. She'd very nearly asked Damian for help in breaking into the cave before remembering how petty he tended to be and avoided that option for fear of him holding it over her head. So instead she waited until Jason came home from his latest excursion to Themyscira and used his preoccupation with whatever he was reading to follow him into the cave from one of the alternate entrances. She stayed in the shadows, avoiding his line of sight as he laid his tablet down, tabbing through what looked like photos of a book.

A few minutes after he arrived, she was trying to override the lock on her armor chamber when he got a call that he put on speaker, assuming no one else was there.

"Jason Wayne," he answered.

"Hey, kid, how's it hanging?"

Jason frowned at the phone. "Caden?"

"Don't sound so surprised. Can't I call my old partner?"

He snorted. "Yeah, partner for one night. I hardly think that counts."

"I never forget anyone who does me a solid, Jason."

"Fair enough. What's up?"

"What do you mean 'what's up?' You sent me a message about that nasty business in Singapore and Bialya, and I just now managed to get to reading it. You mentioned needing allies, so I figured you might want to talk."

"No offense, but I'm not sure how much help you'll be against someone like Janus."

"That's not making you stop your father."

Jason huffed. "Only because I know he's too stubborn to let me handle this alone. If I had a choice, I'd keep _both_ of them out of this." His expression darkened. "I have no intention of having a repeat incident of 2032."

"I get that, but I'm not sure I could afford to stay out if I wanted to."

"What do you mean? Are the Decembrists back in Star City?"

"No, and I want to keep it that way. Richard Dragon is panicking; without their active support, he's floundering under efforts from me and the FBI. Just need one last nail in the coffin, and he's all mine."

"You want to help me shut down his network."

"Exactly. I'm good at that sort of thing, but I'm sure you don't need a reminder; you know my resume."

Jason leaned back in his seat and thought for a bit, Cass chewing her lower lip as she finally got the lock open. "Okay. You're on. But this is going to take more than the two of us, especially if we run across Janus himself."

"I agree. Which is why I have another name to throw into the ring."

"Can we trust them?"

"Kid, you know me. If we couldn't, I wouldn't have brought 'em up. Especially not for something this sensitive."

Jason chuckled. "Fair enough. Who is it?"

"His name is Alexander Kaiser, former lieutenant in BPD SWAT and the other liaison to Dragoneye. A mishap in one of their raids got him a bullet in the kneecap and forced him into early retirement in Atlanta."

"I heard about this. Supposedly, that happened only a couple years ago. How could he have recovered enough to help us?"

Cass heard the grin in Caden's reply. "Because he also happens to be the only Blue Lantern of Sector 2814."

…

Getting to Atlanta was as easy as taking off from the Batcave, but since he didn't expect to be coming back home for a good while, Jason decided to take his armor with him in a backpack fitted for that express purpose. The helmet made it bulge a little, but the rest of the armor fit in its hollow for the most part, so no one was the wiser to its actual contents. Touching down in a thickly wooded area just outside the city, Jason walked the rest of the way to the northmost corner of Atlanta.

Which was where he happened upon a quaint little restaurant with the hilariously punny-slash-horrible name "Pho Your Enjoyment" posted above the entrance in English, Vietnamese, and…was that _Hebrew_?

Jason stared at the sign for a good second or two, shaking his head before going in and taking a long look at the dark wood that made up the furniture and interior. With how well everything was polished, how new all the equipment looked, and the miraculous smells coming from the kitchen; Jason was hard-pressed to believe that a cop had started this place up—or a clean cop, anyway. It must've cost a _fortune_ just to put it all together. Still, Dick and Caden didn't associate with corrupt police…especially not ones that knew their secrets.

Glancing around for any familiar faces, Jason seated himself at the bar, unslinging his backpack and laying it on the ground next to his stool. The music playing in the background was a subdued mix of pop and alternative artists, nothing particularly special, but it fit well enough for a place like this. The arrival of a presence behind him preceded a firm pat of his shoulder as Caden sat down next to him.

Jason stared at him. "How'd you get here so fast?"

Caden blinked, a blank look on his face. "I've been here all day, man." He pulled a flask from his leather jacket and tilted it toward the door to the kitchen. "It was while I was visiting Alex that I had an epiphany about him joining us."

"Huh. Does he know we're here?"

"Yeah, but it's kinda hard to pull him away at this time of day, considering he's the head chef."

Jason's raven eyebrows shot skyward.

"He wasn't always a cop," Caden chuckled. "But he dropped out of culinary school to sign up after he witnessed the Fort Hood shooting in 2009. Five years later, he was leading SWAT raids in Blüdhaven."

Jason whistled through his teeth. "Hell of a career shift…and a lieutenant in five years."

"It helps when there are so few competent cops in Blüdhaven."

He shrugged. "I guess."

Jason turned back toward the kitchen, where the door opened to reveal a man about his height with dirty blond hair, blue eyes that he could just barely make out through the shadows over them, and a complexion that was distinctly East Asian, not dissimilar from Cass. He was wearing a long apron and carrying a pair of ceramic bowls billowing with steam. He handed them off to a nearby waiter with a sunny grin, his eyes flickering to the pair waiting at the bar for the barest of seconds before he turned to a woman at his side and whispered something that prompted her to bow her head slightly in respect.

Jason's eyebrows rose sharply, turning to Caden. "_That's_ Alex Kaiser?"

Before he could reply, a new voice came from the other side of the counter.

"Guilty as charged," said the owner, still grinning and wiping his hands with a nearby towel. "And you are?"

He blinked at the older man before holding out his hand. "Jason. Jason uh…" he glanced around, "Prince."

Alex arched an eyebrow, glancing at Caden, who nodded. Alex nodded back and returned his attention to Jason. "Pleasure making your acquaintance," he said finally, shaking his hand. Then he noticed Jason's confused look. "Something wrong?"

Jason blinked a few times before snapping himself out of his thoughts. "Don't take this the wrong way, but…you don't _look_ like a Kaiser. Are you…"

"Adopted?" He chuckled. "No."

To Jason's surprise, he didn't seem to take the least bit of offense at the question.

"And my hair isn't dyed either, if you were thinking it."

Jason threw his hands up in silent question.

Alex held up a finger. "Hold that thought, Mr. Prince. Just gimme a minute to change outta this." He shrugged. "About time I hand off my shift anyway."

A few minutes later, he did just that, emerging from the employees only door in a denim jacket and wonderfully tacky cowboy boots. Alex motioned the pair over to a nearby booth, silently ordering water to be served for each of them. Caden politely ignored his glass, instead sipping from the flask in his jacket.

"Don't worry about the question, kid," Alex said when they were settled. "I get asked that all the time. I am…well, I like to call myself the 'gifted mongrel.'"

Jason gave him a quizzical look.

Alex chuckled and waved to a series of black-and-white and sepia-tinted photos on the wall. "Great-grandpappy was a German-Jewish immigrant who escaped the Holocaust, and his oldest son, my grandfather, met his wife in 'Nam during the war. A few years later, my mother was born. Then, in the late 80s, my brother and I came along."

Jason blinked. "And your dad?"

An amused twinkle emerged in Alex's blue eyes. "Well, Dad is the reason I sometimes wear _these_."

He reached toward his eyes one by one, pulling out contacts Jason hadn't even noticed. Which was when he noticed that Alex's eyes weren't blue, but a vibrant royal purple.

Jason stared at him. "_Whoa_…that…can't be natural."

That amused look returned. "Natural, yes. Human…no."

The boy gaped. "So, you're…"

"Part German, part Jewish, part Vietnamese and…"

"Part alien."

Alex smiled. "Part Xun, to be precise."

"Xun? I'm not familiar."

"Not surprising. Their sector of space is so far from ours, I doubt even the Justice League rubs up against them. Especially since they wouldn't have much reason to interfere in their affairs."

"Why's that?"

Caden chimed in here. "Because the Xun Empire is a warrior culture that revolves around honoring guardians of all types. Every citizen must be willing to stand up for someone who can't. Even their nobility aren't exempt from this requirement."

"_Especially_ them," Alex added. "Their emperor is known as the Lord Protector for just this reason. Because of this paradigm, their civilization is singular in its power and size, despite not being a culture of conquerors. On the contrary, their widely known martial ability led to massive expansion over the course of centuries by nature of unassociated worlds inviting them, if for no other reason than to share in that security. Are you familiar with the sector system?"

Jason frowned in thought. "It's the way the Guardians of the Universe use to divide the galaxy for distribution of Green Lanterns."

"Exactly. Well, this expansion continued to the point where the Xun Empire grew to span an entire sector of space. Despite the dense population of the Empire and its worlds, the guardian mindset of their culture and corresponding military might made having multiple Green Lanterns a bit redundant. Instead, the Guardians made a deal with a previous emperor to assign a single GL to patrol their space and carry out missions that would be too dangerous for even an army to attempt. Given the displays of courage and nobility common to the Xun, there was certainly no shortage of candidates."

Jason whistled and bobbed his head. "That's…pretty cool."

Alex grinned. "My older brother would agree with you."

"So your dad was a Xun."

He nodded with a small sigh. "He is, yes, and a high-ranking one at that."

Jason sensed he'd touched a bit of a raw nerve. "How high-ranking?" In his peripherals, he could see Caden hiding a grin in a swig from his flask. "Let me guess: nobility?"

Alex laughed nervously. "Royal, actually."

Jason stared at him wide-eyed. "So…you're like…a prince?"

He chuckled. "Not quite. See, their hierarchy is a bit different from most imperial systems you may be familiar with. The noble houses are not based solely on blood, especially with the assimilation of so many other species. The Xun are masters of genetic engineering, not unlike the people who modified _him_." He waved at Caden, who bristled a bit at the reminder. "Over time, they engineered successive generations to be the strongest, most adaptable versions of their species, to the point where their natural reproductive process evolved to choose only the most beneficial traits of each parent's contribution. Their DNA is such that even hybrid couples could bear children, though this required a certain level of genetic compatibility on the component level if nothing else."

Jason frowned in thought. "I think I get what you're saying. So, like, they could breed with other DNA-based species, but not an RNA-based organism."

"Exactly. Or one that is not carbon-based."

"But because humans fit both those requirements, your parents had no problem having you."

He smiled and nodded. "The issue is, hybrid kids need to pick one phenotype from either species for stability. From a genetic standpoint, there is such a thing as half-Xun. However, from outward-displaying characteristics, you'd never be able to tell who's pure and who isn't. So, when my mom had fraternal twins, one of us manifested Xun characteristics, and the other looked entirely human." He smiled wryly and waved at his face. "Well, except the eyes. But then, that's thanks to the 'best traits' coding in my blood." Alex grinned. "So I got Dad's eyes, grandma's features and skin, and granddad's hair."

Jason exhaled hard, carding a hand through his hair. "That's…a lot to take in." He frowned. "One thing doesn't make sense, though."

"What's that?"

"If their sector of space is so far from ours, how did your parents meet in the first place?"

Alex's good humor vanished, those violet eyes turning to Caden.

"He's good," Caden said firmly.

A sigh came from the "gifted mongrel." "I suppose it all fits with how I got…_this_."

His left thumb drifted to the middle finger of the same hand, where Jason noticed for the first time a large ring of purest blue, bearing a symbol like a double-edged axe. He recognized it immediately as the Blue Lantern insignia.

"Right…about that," Jason said hesitantly.

"Yes?"

"How exactly are you supposed to help us in the field? From what I understand, Blue Lanterns have blocks on their full abilities unless they're around a Green Lantern; it's a safeguard because they're so naturally powerful. And in case you hadn't noticed, we're kinda short on Green Lanterns."

Alex smiled grimly. "Like I said before, I'm a gifted mongrel, and my DNA isn't the only exceptional part about who I am." He leaned back in his seat, curling his left hand into a fist. His ring flared with a faint light a second before it began projecting on the table.

Jason blinked and flinched at the sudden light that was so obvious, staring at Alex.

"Relax," Caden said with a hand on his shoulder. "Whether it's his role as SWAT or as Blue Lantern, Alex has never bothered keeping secrets about his identity."

Jason arched an eyebrow at him. "And what about ours?"

The spy shrugged. "He talks to so many people about this stuff, nobody'll bat an eyelash."

Jason looked around the restaurant and, sure enough, hardly a single person was even glancing in their direction, despite the luminous projection coming from Alex's ring. With a sigh, he nodded to their host.

Alex's eyes turned from Jason to the projection, their royal purple flaring with light and shifting to an intense blue that matched his ring and glowed faintly. The projection steadily took on more and more detail, something about it telling Jason that he'd done this more than once. When it finally took on form, there were 3D silhouettes milling about a lavish ballroom that would look perfectly in place in some Renaissance gathering were it not for the floating furniture and utterly foreign materials.

"My father, Veklan Zor'ad, was crown prince at the time, and as such his personal life was…somewhat up for grabs for his 'betters.'"

Jason scowled. "You're talking about arranged marriage."

Alex winced, the images shifting to show a broad-shouldered silhouette clasping hands with a feminine shadow. "To someone their parents believed would be a perfect fit: his childhood friend Olian'dra. The two were always thick as thieves, yet for all that, they never loved each other that way." The projection morphed to show Vek's silhouette facing down a couple wearing crowns. "Dad disapproved of the move, and made his displeasure known to his parents _and_ hers. They did nothing. On the contrary, they tried to push the engagement up and practically forced the matter.

"But stubbornness is something that runs in both sides of my family, so when he saw his opportunity, he took his personal fighter and bolted." The image transformed, showing a sleek alien fighter with dual prongs that arced out from an elliptical occupancy chamber. "A certain set of relatives, cousins, saw this as an affront—and an opportunity." The image zoomed out, and four more ships joined the fray. "They sent their best hunters to capture or eliminate him; Dad never bothered to ask them which it was. He just made sure he shot first." The projection showed just that, and a furious dogfight that followed in short clips that showed different environments. "The chase lasted damn near three days across four sectors before the remaining two hunters finally cornered him in Sector 2814.

"Their last fight happened near the asteroid belt between us and Mars. So when they managed to disable his main guns, he drew them in. Using the environment, he managed to destroy them, but not without sustaining critical damage to his own ship." Vek's fighter was trashed and trailing smoke, whole chunks and part of one wing missing. "He crash-landed on Earth, in a field not ten miles from where we're sitting. That's where Mom found him." The ring showed the fighter in ruins in a lush field of grass, and a feminine form pulling Vek's suited-up body from the wreckage. "She was an aspiring doctor at the time and, despite knowing nothing about Xun biology, managed to fix him up over the course of a few weeks.

"Without a working ship or the means to contact his people, Dad was stuck here on Earth, and with a heart like hers, she wasn't about to turn him out, especially since he could pass as human with a little cosmetic work. So…she let him live with her while she finished her program and uh…" Alex smirked as the image dissipated. "Well, I'm sure you can imagine how _that_ went."

Jason smiled. "So you and your brother came out of that."

He nodded slowly, his mirth slowly fading. "It was only a couple months after we were born when a scout ship sent by Dad's parents finally tracked his fighter down. He knew he couldn't run from his responsibilities forever, and Mom understood that, if for appearances only, he would have to marry Li. But given that he had no intention of ever sleeping with her, the Empire needed an heir."

Jason frowned. "And they had oh-so-conveniently made a Xun-presenting hybrid baby."

Alex nodded again. "It took everything in Mom just to agree to let him go, and quite a bit of cajoling to make sure the scout pilot kept her mouth shut, but…in the end, he went home and married Olian'dra. He told her everything, about Mom, about the kids, and she agreed that the whole thing was a farce. So…right before the wedding, my brother Kad'assos was presented to the royal family as theirs. After all, it's slightly less scandalous that a pureblood lovechild should issue from an indiscretion between two betrothed than a half-human baby from a woman he hadn't known for more than two years.

"Luckily for them, everyone bought it, and Kad's been raised as the crown prince ever since." Alex leaned back in his seat, staring off into space.

"Does he know?" Jason asked. "About you and your mother, I mean."

He blinked slowly, his eyes returned to their normal royal purple. "He knows. He didn't always, and for a while he was pissed at Dad about that. Especially since…" he frowned, a flash of pain in his eyes, "since he only got to meet Mom the once before uh…"

Jason felt Caden tense at his side, his fists clenching on the tabletop to restrain the urge to hug Alex across the table.

"Before the cancer took her."

Jace blinked at him, sighing hard. "_Oh_. I see."

Alex laughed raggedly. "He blamed himself for that, the dumbass. So did Dad. Mom…hadn't told him she was diagnosed, and with his responsibilities as emperor, they rarely ever got the chance to see each other in person. Easy enough to fake being healthy over a holocall." He frowned and shook his head. "I told her not to keep it a secret, that with all that alien tech, there might be a way to save her but…she wouldn't have been able to stop there." He smiled sadly. "My mother didn't have a selfish bone in her body; if Dad or my bro had used Xun techniques to save her, she would've insisted that that medicine be turned over for reverse-engineering to help all of humanity.

"Given how much dangerous alien tech already exists on this planet—and how easily benevolent science can be corrupted by humans—she felt that it was too great a risk to take." His hands tightened to fists. "So she said nothing."

Jason stared at him. "And neither did you?"

He met the boy's eyes. "I saw her point about the bigger picture. That doesn't mean I liked it, but if I could do it over, I would still respect her wishes."

"I couldn't."

Alex smiled wanly. "Kinda figured that, Tomorrow Kid."

His eyes rolled. "It's _Knight_. Tomorrow _Knight_."

He grinned. "I know." His smile faded. "It would've been a different story if I'd had this ring back then." He stared at the symbol on its face. "I could've just healed her and been done with it, no alien tech required. And since this is a power only I can use…that would've eliminated the risks." He sighed hard. "But alas…it came only too late, _after_ I was forced to retire from BPD. I moved back here to be closer to Mom, but when she passed…I was in a bit of a funk. Didn't quite know what to do other than keep serving drinks and food."

"So how did you get involved with the Lanterns?"

Alex smiled. "It actually started with Kad. Well him and his uh…girlfriend at the time. Ex, now." His smile turned wry. "Well, for _him_ anyway. See, the GL of his sector was killed sometime after his official coming-of-age ceremony, and to his shock, _he_ was chosen to be the next one. Now, you gotta understand; Green Lanterns are seen as the ultimate expression of guardians to the Xun, so they often hold a high, if unofficial, place in the royal court. So, when that ring came to my brother, the whole royal family mourned. Kad had practically grown _up_ with the guy, and as a result vowed to hunt down his killer.

"Of course, the Guardians didn't like that much, sending an emotional rookie after a killer that had taken out one of their best, so they assembled their own investigative team. That's where he met the woman who came with him to meet _me_ for the first time." Alex grinned. "The three of us have been friends ever since."

"So amid all that, you somehow got…chosen as the next Blue Lantern. How? They're so few in number because of their necessary mindset, plus there's all the trials and interviews and whatnot. Plus, having served with SWAT, you're not exactly a pacifist like most of them."

Alex arched an eyebrow. "All perfectly fair points, if this were a standard case." His expression darkened. "But it wasn't." He gulped hard. "About six months after Kad found out about his true origins, so did the rest of the Empire, and _boy_ was there backlash. Those same troublesome cousins I mentioned? Yeah, they tried to oust my family from the throne, and when _that_ didn't work, some of them decided to target me for leverage. Or…maybe just revenge. So they sent one bounty hunter or assassin after the next." He waved around vaguely. "More than a few times, they had the audacity to attack me _here_." He pointed at a section of the counter. "See those scorch marks? That was from a plasma pistol wielded by this weird tentacle creature.

"Same with the ceiling fan we had to replace. Oh, and I needed to buy a dozen more chairs after a tussle or two that got up close and personal."

Jason winced. "_That_ couldn't have been good for business."

Alex laughed. "At first, I thought so too, but there was so little collateral damage—and only to the property—that people kept on coming back. Well, that and watching your ex-SWAT head chef storm outta the kitchen with an M4 rippin' away at troublemakers apparently tends to inspire a lot of confidence." He downed his entire glass of water. "That went on for about oh…three months, I want to say. Never had an issue, despite my busted knee." He slapped the leg in question. "Sent 'em all home with their tails between their legs or in body bags."

Jason frowned and leaned on his hands. "So what changed?"

His expression darkened for a moment, his left hand briefly scratching at his clavicle—and a faint scar just exposed by his shirt. "I got distracted."

Jace's eyebrows shot upward. "By _what_? If you survived Blüdhaven and a couple dozen alien assassins, I'd have thought you'd have a little more awareness."

Alex chuckled nervously. "Yeah, you're not wrong, but until then, none of them had ever attacked me at home, so I figured they didn't know where I lived. I thought I was safe there. And uh…well…remember what I said about that woman being Kad's ex?"

"Uh huh?"

Alex grinned ear to ear. "Let's just say you and Grayson don't have a monopoly on hot alien girlfriends."

…

_ A contented hum came from one end of the queen-sized bed, a disgruntled one following a moment later when morning sunlight blared in through one of the windows. That hum turned into a groan as Alex threw an arm over his eyes to keep out the sun. His groan was answered with the softest of chuckles as he felt the weight on his chest shift slightly, and a light, wet sensation on his chest caught his attention. One royal purple eye slipped open, meeting a pair of amused silver, just as alien as his own. Their owner scooted up, her _very_ red hair gliding along his bare chest as she straddled him, smiling gently the whole time._

_ Alex fought the urge to fidget or sneeze when her hair tickled his nose, instead staring blankly up at her elfin face, further completed with the alien points on the tips of her ears. He grinned from ear to ear as something occurred to him, and he reached up to tuck one side of her hair behind one of those ears._

_ "Y'know…I've always had a bit of a thing for drow."_

_ She blinked and stared at him uncomprehendingly, not that he'd expected anything less. "What are…drow?"_

_ He chuckled, hands stroking her hair and hip. "They're also called dark elves, elements of human lore referring to pale or dark-skinned people with pointy ears." His grin widened. "Who happen to be very strong-willed and domineering."_

_ She arched a red eyebrow. "I don't imagine our peoples would've had very much interaction."_

_ Alex shrugged and pulled her close, her face inches from his. "No one would've expected the Xun to find their way to humanity, but I'm living proof otherwise. A lot more of our traditional lore and mythology is rooted in history than most people would like to believe, so who knows?"_

_ "Also, I may be strong-willed, but I don't think I'm particularly 'domineering.'"_

_ He stuck his tongue out and booped her nose with his. "No, but you can be quite _dominant_, Laira."_

_ A smirk tugged at her lips as she turned her chin up at him. "I never heard you complaining."_

_ Alex gently bit his lower lip. "Mhm. Nope. You didn't."_

_ They held each other's gaze for a few moments before breaking out in laughter and rolling around under the covers, ending up cuddling side-by-side. They stared at the ceiling for a bit, idly stroking the other's arm._

_ "Am I the only one who's hungry?"_

_ Laira turned her head to look at the side of his. "The only one hungry enough to get up, maybe."_

_ Alex snorted. "And I thought _I _wasn't the morning person in this relationship."_

_ "No, I'd just prefer to take it easy on my day off."_

_ "I'm surprised you Lanterns even get any."_

_ She chuckled softly. "If I didn't, I'd still find an excuse to see you."_

_ "Dawww…"_

_ Laira smacked his chest playfully, vainly trying to hide a grin. "You're right though; I am hungry." She finally let that grin show. "Make me something."_

_ Alex arched a dirty blond eyebrow, leaning over her with a teasing smirk. "See what I said about your dominant side?"_

_ Laira peered at him with half-lidded eyes as she sat up far enough to bring them face-to-face, her fingers tracing his jaw until she suddenly held his chin in a firm grip. "Again," she whispered huskily, "didn't hear you complaining."_

_ Alex blushed down to his roots, the heat in her own face only slightly visible despite her pale purple skin._

_ She swiped her index across his chin, smiling wryly. "Well? Get to it, then." Her eyes softened and she pecked his lips._

_ Alex grunted softly and kissed her back as best he could. "Yes, ma'am."_

_ He pushed off the bed and stood up a little shakily, wincing and favoring his left side. He caught just the faintest hint of a frown on her face before she quickly resumed a neutral expression. Alex turned toward the door that went to the combined dining-slash-living-room-slash-kitchen, walking through with the faintest limp. He appreciated her not making a big deal about the leg; like a great deal of handicapped people who walked into his restaurant, he never liked being treated as an invalid. Though he knew that wasn't why she was frowning. They'd spoken about the circumstances surrounding it on multiple occasions, as well as what it meant for him._

_ He _loved_ being a cop._

_ Well, not all aspects of it. There were some parts that he outright hated. The force's overreliance (though justified) on lethal force to get the job done, especially in a town as backwards and violent as Blüdhaven, for one. So many of the people he helped put away could be decent if they weren't consistently being given the short end of the stick. Stigmas from the police and upper class, pressures from their own, and an ever-pervasive culture of kill or be killed all conspired to keep them in the never-ending cycle of crime and punishment. Not that that in any way excused their actions._

_ For every gangbanger and "frequent customer" he put behind bars or in a body bag, Alex knew a few that took a second chance offered and pulled themselves up out of that mire. But none of them could do it without that ever-so-elusive quality: hope. The madness at Fort Hood had given him a glimpse of the terror and hopelessness experienced all too often by those caught in the path of evil. As much as food and good company could be used to lift people's spirits, he knew he could do more. So he moved to Blüdhaven, put on the shield, and went to work. And he was damn good at it._

_ He was never quite one to play by the book, but also never made a point of flouting the rules. His grandfather had always tried to instill in him a mentality of "spirit, not letter," despite being a self-proclaimed "bad Jew." In that respect, perhaps, some of his fellow police might have considered him a bad cop. He preferred to look at it as an attitude of grace. Alex didn't have to show mercy; in far too many cases, the evidence and eyewitnesses were so thick it was outright damning, and for the truly irredeemable—the murderers and rapists and racketeers—he brought down the banhammer._

_ But there were those who fell in beside these who were just as much victims, bought or bullied into submission with seemingly no other options. It was with these people that he saw the faintest flickers of hope, too often snuffed out by peer pressure and a system too broken to fix itself, much less the people it was supposed to protect. Which, he supposed, was why he didn't tell a soul when he found Detective Grayson bleeding to death in an alley carrying two teched-out escrimas and wearing ballistic armor whose design had been plastered on every wanted poster in the city. It wasn't hard to put the rest of the pieces together after that, and just as the Batman had found an ally in James Gordon, Nightwing found his in Alexander Kaiser._

_ For the next six months, they worked with Dragoneye to clean up their city. They were winning the war._

_ And then a brainwashed successor of Nightwing from the future ambushed his SWAT team mid-operation and put a .45 round through his kneecap._

_ He couldn't even remember the pain, to be honest, or the ride to the hospital. Small blessings, he supposed. The next thing he remembered after breaching the door of that warehouse was waking up in Blüdhaven General with a massive wad of gauze strapped to his leg and an exhausted Dick dozing in a nearby chair. The days that followed were little more than a blur of surgeries and apologetic faces that alternatively made him want to scream or curl into a ball. One theme had been consistent throughout it all: he could no longer function as a cop, at least not in the field. And if his only option was to shine a seat all day and fill out paperwork, he'd rather quit._

_ So quit he did, though Dick gave him one hell of a sendoff, and a promise to put him in touch with someone who could help him figure out his next step. A day later, a taller Latino man with impossibly dark eyes and an unyielding aura of danger showed up at his apartment and offered to help him finish culinary school. None of it made any kind of sense; they didn't know each other, and he didn't exactly seem like the kind of person to indulge in charity. Then Caden Drake revealed he was a "family friend" of the Waynes, and this wasn't the first time he'd helped one of theirs cope with a new handicap acquired in the line of duty._

_ For the longest time, Alex couldn't decide whether to feel frightened or flattered to be considered in the _vicinity_ of one of the Bats._

_ He eventually figured it was probably a bit of both. His mom and Caden had been instrumental in getting him back on his feet, literally and figuratively, and Drake even fronted him the cash he needed to build Pho Your Enjoyment. A loan it was not, he'd said, and not charity either. Despite the dripping red of his track record, Caden believed wholeheartedly in paying it forward, and Alex got the feeling that the Bats had helped him considerably at some point in his life. Which was the challenge he issued to Kaiser when the restaurant first opened: pay it forward. That was Drake's "payback."_

_ So he did. People came to restaurants and bars to forget their troubles, but on occasion, with the right company, they also came to talk about them. Having compassion drummed into him from birth by an incredibly empathic mother made him a natural listener, and his experience in life and on the force gave him the know-how to talk many of them through it. Just like that, he was back to helping people, and not just their stomachs._

_ Meeting Kad and Laira had been the final notch in that belt._

_ He finally understood why he was so driven by this. It was in his blood, on both sides, and the older brother he'd never known was _proud_ of him. His brother, the superhero, was proud of _him_. Hearing that story was the happiest he'd seen Mom before…well, he supposed it was only fitting. She only went the moment she knew her boys were going to be okay._

_ Coughing, Alex wiped at his eyes briefly as his other hand shuffled the sizzling frying pan across the stovetop. He turned his thoughts to the task at hand, to the beautiful, hardworking woman lazing about in his bed; and couldn't help the ridiculous grin that overtook his face. Laira Omoto, his girlfriend, the superhero._

God, how did I get so lucky?

_ He took the pan off the stove and casually tossed a trio of turkey bacon strips into the oil, recoiling slightly when he realized he'd heated it too much and it started popping. Alex drew back just far enough to avoid being burnt as he turned up the vent fan and waited for the smoke to clear out a bit. So distracted was he with his thoughts and breakfast prep that he failed to hear the loud _thump_ of heavy steps coming from the front door, or the faint shearing of the deadbolt being cut with a razor-sharp blade._

_ He heard the explosion of wood and metal just fine when the door was gratuitously kicked in._

_ But then, given how much shrapnel was sent flying his way, he supposed that was the point: lessen the door's resistance to give the shards more force, make them even more deadly. He hit the deck just before a dozen of them speared the stove and opposite wall, his purple eyes narrowing to avoid the glare from the skylight outside. He managed to glimpse an imposing silhouette backlit by the sun, slowly resolving into a decidedly alien form of metal and polymer encasing a vaguely humanoid shape. It took him a second to make out the decidedly reptilian features of his attacker, the thick, muscular tail that dragged behind its legs as it stalked through the door._

_ Alex's heart raced with panic and adrenaline. No hunter sent by the Xer'os family had managed to track him home. Unfortunately for this poor sap, that extra work would only put it in more danger. Alex pushed himself toward the dining table and felt his left hand wrap around the grip of a .40 caliber pistol he kept taped to the underside. Half the mag was emptied into the would-be assassin before it reached the table, the other half following when Alex grit his teeth and rolled away from the charging reptile. Ignoring the pain in his leg, he reached back into the coat closet he'd landed next to, his fingers finding the barrel of his M4 and yanking it free._

_ A massive, scaly hand stopped the weapon's motion, red cat eyes glaring down at him mercilessly as the hunter brought its other hand to bear with a wickedly curved blade the size of Alex's arm. An ethereal whir sounded from the side as the blade stopped less than halfway to its target, Laira's furious visage complemented by the faint glow in her now-green eyes. Her Lantern uniform rapidly materialized around her body, encasing her in vibrant hunter green armor. The projection holding back the alien's weapon constricted suddenly, pulling it toward Laira, who wheeled-kicked it in the gut and followed up with a leaping left cross to the face._

_ Her projection vanished, re-forming into a plated gauntlet that looked like a sledgehammer had been strapped to her arm. That gauntlet slammed into the alien's arms as it brought its arms up to protect its face, a fearsome growl chilling Alex to the core even as he pushed it down and regained control of his rifle. The alien rolled away, the rapid movement shaking the whole apartment with its mass as it angled its movement back toward Alex. The M4 spewed hot lead at the creature as fast as he could pull the trigger, but not a single round seemed to do more than piss it off._

_ Laira shouted and snapped a ring of green around the hunter's midsection, stopping it in its tracks. The blade still clutched in its left hand slashed at the restraint, barely doing a thing. And then the creature did something neither of them expected, reaching into a hardened compartment on its belt and whipping out a faintly glowing yellow crystal. It brought the sharpest edge of the crystal down into Laira's bonds; they shattered instantly, sending both of them into a brief bout of shock. _

_ "Aurem," she exhaled just loud enough for Alex to hear._

_Laira barely had enough time to erect a shield before the crystal shattered it and she narrowly avoided having her head taken off by the creature's blade. She handsprung backward, flying back to reevaluate but gaping when the blade was swapped out for a cylindrical device that she apparently recognized, since she charged forward with a ring blast directed right at it. The elongated cylinder glowed with power at the very same time, green energy colliding with red and creating a massive explosion that vaporized most of the apartment's living room and sent Laira flying the next block over._

_Alex brought his arms up to shield his face and naked upper body, getting shallow cuts to his forearms, but otherwise doing no damage. A mere glance was enough to confirm that Laira was nowhere to be found. The alien, on the other hand…_

_The M4 was slashed in half before he could even angle it right, and an iron grip around his throat cut off anything Alex was going to say. The massive creature held him over the six-floor drop created by the explosion, its eyes glaring with cold fury._

_And then it—_he_—spoke._ _"So _you_ are the bastard? Well, the _other_ bastard." He sniffed at Alex's head. "Don't look like much, and your weapons are primitive at best. Still, you are the easiest and best paycheck I have earned in many cycles."_

_Alex gritted his bloodied teeth and gripped one jagged half of his rifle, eyes searching for the smallest of weak points._

"_I imagine I'll be coming for the elder next," the hunter snarled. "I cannot wait to hear _his_ screams as well."_

"_Only screams here," Alex wheezed, "will be—yours."_

_And with that, he brought the sharpest end of the weapon's remains straight into the creature's left eye. An ear-splitting roar nearly blew out Alex's hearing as the hunter thrashed about, his grip on Alex's throat loosening for barely a second before reasserting itself as he tore the rifle piece from his mangled eye. Glaring at the human with his one intact eye, he snarled with pure hatred and brandished that wretched blade._

"_No!" Laira shrieked from just behind Alex._

_He tried, he _tried_ to bring his leg up to kick the alien's wrist back, keep it at bay just long enough for her to get there. But it was coming in on his right side, he tried with his right leg, and even if it had gotten high enough, the sheer force would've instantly caved the limb in. _

_And the blade would've put a massive hole through his lung anyway. _

…

_ "Alex!" Laira screamed at the top of her lungs, blinded to everything but the impaled man dangling over a seventy-foot fall and the Gordanian _monster_ holding him there._

_ The creature spotted Laira's approaching form over Alex's shoulder and grinned madly as he tore the blade loose and dropped him. Her ring instantly projected an elastic net to catch him, but she quickly found herself being hammered by more energy blasts from the Gordanian's staff cannon. Hardening her shields, she focused on Alex, feeling the faintest of impacts through the ring when his body impacted her net. Then the Gordanian fed that yellow crystal into the firing chamber of his cannon, and before she could even think of moving Alex to safety, blew her projection to shards._

_ Her eyes flew wide open as he freefell toward the alley, the Lantern firing off a quick blast at the hunter as she dove for him. Another return shot impacted hers, and this time her blast was completely annihilated as the Gordanian's speared toward her. The instinctive forcefield she put up shattered instantly, her vision briefly fading to black before she realized she was flying over the rooftops near Alex's apartment in an uncontrolled descent. Her right hand tightened around her ring, a touch of antigravity halting her motion and bringing her to a steady hover. Laira's eyes drifted over toward the ruined building, just staring as the seconds passed and her body went numb._

It…can't…

_ Laira's eyes slammed shut, the pain in her chest threatening to rip her to shreds. The hum of a charging energy weapon snapped her attention to a nearby rooftop, revealing the Gordanian aiming that accursed cannon. Snarling in rage, Laira dropped like a rock, successfully dodging his first and second shots, focusing on avoidance rather than direct action. Like this, she managed to close the distance and roared as she laid into his face with a flurry of energy-knuckled punches. The creature's helmet cracked and shattered under the force of her blows, his chestplate following not long after._

_ The bloodstained blade he tried to use on her failed when she summoned a shield and battered it out of his grip before slamming it into his bloodied face. The alien hunter growled and flinched with every impact, Laira's mind and will zeroing in on a single, all-consuming thought._

Kill…kill…_kill_!

_The Sinestro Corps War had ended less than a year previous, the Book of Oa rewritten, Green Lanterns finally made capable of lethal force. She could do it. She could kill him. Given how much blood he had spilt for little more than coin and reputation, she probably _should_. But then she thought of Alex's radiant smile as he talked about his experiences in BPD, about the numerous people he helped, the criminals he reformed…and the darkness in his eyes when he remembered the lives he was forced to take in the line of duty._

_ The expanding arm-blade that would've shattered the Gordanian's internal organs shifted at the last second into a rounded row of knuckles._

_ And vanished entirely before it even touched the creature's chest. Her armored fist alone smacked against the Gordanian's bruised muscles, but the iron cords nevertheless held fast. Laira mentally cursed as she lunged away from her opponent, glancing to the side to see that yellow crystal shining its glow through the window to the staff's firing chamber._

_ Aurem, the yellow element, the only thing in the universe capable of forming yellow power rings and innately capable of draining green rings of their power. The more she was exposed, the more power her ring would lose, and the faster she would be rendered powerless. Laira glanced at the holographic display her ring automatically projected over her eyes, finding only 0.8% power. Another curse, this one audible, streamed from her lips. Her ring had barely enough power to maintain her armor and flight, and though injured, the Gordanian still had a full complement of weapons._

_ A faint metallic glint in her peripherals caught her attention._

Perhaps not a _full_ complement…

_ Laira dove for the blade, snatching it up as she flew past. She whirled toward the hunter, who was sprinting at her on all fours, tail swirling in his wake and driving him forward. Laira crouched and coiled herself up, waiting for just the right moment. When he sprung for her staff first, she leapt over his head and slashed at his back, scoring a deep gash in the armor. Her resulting flip was landed without any flourish or finesse, just used as a springboard to launch herself back into the fray, targeting the staff and the crystal that resided within. If she could just get that out of radiation range…_

_ That option vanished when her charging leap turned into a charging roll when her ring's flight gave out. That single stutter in her motion left her vulnerable to a powerful staff swing that nearly took her head off. Instead, the vision in her right eye darkened, and she felt a bruise forming as she was knocked flat on the gravel of the rooftop. Gasping, Laira hurled herself sideways and barrel-rolled away from the follow-up strike that caved in the roof. She leapt to her feet, staying back just enough to remain out of range of the staff's blunt strikes, but close enough to avoid being shot…hopefully._

_ They paced around each other, eyes locked, until the hunter tensed and launched himself at Laira with a staff thrust coupled with a blast. She ducked underneath, using the blade to shunt the weapon upward as the shot went off, flying into the distance. Laira spun and slammed both boots into the Gordanian's knee, the creature snarling but otherwise showing no damage. Two up-close staff strikes were just barely parried as she shifted her body to avoid them. The shock of their weapons colliding shook her arms, quickly tiring her muscles without the reinforcement of her failing ring._

_ As a result, she only withstood three more blows before the blade was knocked from her hands and she threw her arms up to block a staff blast that would've taken her head off. Her armor's bracers shattered, and she was sent flying across the roof to a grinding stop. Groaning loudly, Laira breathed heavily as she painfully sat up, seeing the creature stalking toward her. Her ring's holo-display showed barely .01% power. Her jaw clenched. Every remaining scrap of her will and power was summoned for one final attack._

Beep.

_ Her gaze flickered for a split-second to the display._

.01%—.05%_—_.1%

_Which was when the ear-splitting _crack_ of a sonic boom reached her ears with a piercing flash of sapphire light._

…

_Funny that he couldn't recall the pain of the gunshot that took his knee. If by some miracle he survived this, something told Alex that he'd remember _this_ just fine. The crack of his ribs as he hit the pavement. The agony of his perforated lung as shattered bone pierced soft tissue. The sheer suffocating _panic_ of slowly drowning in his own blood. He fought and clawed and gasped for every wet breath, despite every bone and muscle in his body _screaming_ it was over. Because for every scream, there was just the faintest whisper in answer: his mother, lying in that bed in her last days of life._

"Where there is life—"_ she'd said, hacking coughs cutting through her words. _"Where there is life…"

_Alex gasped and bobbed his jaw, his senses fading with every frightfully slow heartbeat. "Where there…is life…there is—"_

"Hope."

_His purple eyes widened as his heart quite literally stopped with that one word. The darkness overtaking him flickered with just the faintest hint of light, growing and sparking with every passing moment until he believed he had already passed into the next life. Then, all at once, that flicker exploded into a supernova of blue light, the darkness _instantly _banished and overtaken by a warmth he hadn't felt since his mother died._

"Alexander Kaiser,"_ whispered the selfsame voice from his memory. _"You carry within a great wellspring of hope, a beacon of light to all who see it. That light will be needed in the days to come—and _you_ must be the one to carry it. Speak the words, and this light will be given form…and power you could _never_ imagine."

_His left hand shuddered and trembled as he reached out to the light, his body failing but spirit _refusing to die_. He struggled and fought and scrambled for the words, words so elusive, so alien, yet so _right_. He could not believe that his struggles, his journey, would end like this. He _would_ not believe. And so he stretched out his hand, and his lips moved of their own accord as his eyes began to mirror the blinding light._

"_In…fearful day," he rasped, "in…raging night…with strong hearts full…our souls ignite." His left arm dragged his body toward the light, enveloping him in its warmth, and reached out toward it once more as his voice fought past the claws of death. "When all…seems lost…in the War of Light…" his eyes widened, taking in the perfect blue luminance in all its splendor, "look to the stars…for hope…burns…_bright_!"_

_And with that final word, his outstretched hand clenched into a fist, and the light took it; that singular anchor ripping him from death's grasp. _

_Blinding sapphire light exploded from his form, filling the shadowed alley with luminance that far surpassed even the rising sun. The sanguine flow choking his every breath halted and reversed, returning to vessels that righted themselves under the light's faithful glow. Shattered bone was knitted together by azure webs of fate, their structure made whole and stronger than ever in the time it took for their owner to take his first clear breath. A breath that turned into a gasp when the mangled knee of his right leg was bathed in his wellspring, and muscle and bone that had long languished in disrepair for the actions of a coward were made perfectly new._

_A fierce, brilliant grin spread over his features as he hovered in the alley some eight feet off the ground._

_And then he heard the shout of one most dear, and he just _knew_ what to do._

_From one second to the next, he shot forth like a beam of light, the _crack_ of displaced air sounding in his wake. He saw Laira standing bravely against a foe twice her size, despite her disadvantage, despite her grief. He _felt_ her strength fading, her courage waning, and at once his heart went out to reassure her. Her body glowed with emerald light emanating from her ring in waves, that accursed crystal's effects reduced to _nothing_ with his presence alone._

_A presence that vanished along with the crystal's owner when Alexander Kaiser, Blue Lantern of Sector 2814, barreled fists-first into his would-be killer with a roar of triumph._

_He could _destroy_ this creature. In the blink of an eye, with a flick of his hand, he _knew_ he could kill the hunter, just like he had all the rest. But the rest had been bigger than him. The rest had been stronger than him. They had more advanced tech and alien physiology with God knows what natural defenses. With the rest, he hadn't had a choice. It was him or them._

_And now it wasn't._

_His left fist nailed the Gordanian in the jaw, his right hooking the creature's staff with a blow rimmed with energy. The weapon flew from his grasp as the third blow slammed him in the gut. The alien barely even touched the ground between hits, so easy and consistent and _powerful_ were Blue's strikes. He tried to strike back, a bone-crushing hit easily smacked aside and countered with a flying knee to the chest. A palm-heel sent him flying back, grinding to a halt in an open field and just managing to rise to his feet as Alex finally touched down._

_Alex was on the ground for barely a moment when he launched himself at the hunter, left fist cocked back as he roared in righteous fury._

_And pulled his punch at the last possible second._

_It still landed. Hard. But a blow that would've taken off the alien's head—and probably most of his torso—merely sent him flying back into a tree to take a nap in the shadow of its laurels._

_The Blue Lantern hovered in place a few feet away from where his enemy landed, breathing heavily as he stared at his hands and turned his left to see the ring sitting on its middle finger. He felt more than heard a presence approach at his back and turned to see a slack-jawed Laira floating to land near him. Alex smiled warmly, sighing in relief as he too landed and immediately enveloped her in the protective embrace of his arms._

"_I—I don't…" Laira drew back, holding him at arm's length so she could look him over. "How—"_

_Alex smiled and shook his head slightly. "I don't know…exactly." He looked down at his hand, at the ring that seemed to smile back at him. "But I think…I think everything's going to be okay now."_

…

For the first twenty seconds after Alex stopped talking, the booth was silent. As expected, Jason was the first to speak.

"That was…all _wrong_." He stared at the ex-cop. "Blue Lanterns aren't chosen that way. And you mean to tell me that your _dead_ _mom_ somehow inducted you into the Corps?"

Alex chuckled and shook his head. "No, I knew that couldn't be it, even back then. It was just the way the ring chose to speak to me. You're right; nothing about my induction makes any sense. The Blues are chosen and heavily vetted for a reason: because theirs is the single most powerful light in the spectrum. In the wrong hands, with the wrong mindset, that would be utterly devastating."

"Then how—"

"Adara."

Jason blinked. "Who?"

"Adara, the Entity of Hope, and the source of the Blue Lanterns' power." Alex's ring projected a silhouette of a bird, wings outstretched. "When I went to Odym—the Blues' headquarters—looking for answers, Saint Walker—their de facto leader—examined my ring and found an anomaly previously unknown. A…line of code, for lack of a better term, written into it that made an exception for the ring's induction process and higher functions." He smiled. "I am the first Blue Lantern since Saint Walker himself to be chosen outside the standard process. And the first to be chosen directly by Adara."

Jason stared at the silhouette. "Why?"

Alex shrugged and let the image fade. "I don't know. Well, I have a vague idea. At some point during my stay and training on Odym, I fell into a trance and actually exchanged _words_ with Adara." He scratched the back of his head. "Something about a 'cosmic threat' and me being uniquely placed to counter it." He thumbed the ring. "Over a year with this thing, and I still haven't figured out any specifics. She was really cryptic about it."

Jason snorted and looked off to the side. "I know how _that_ is."

Alex blinked owlishly and leaned back in his seat. "That's my story, kiddo." He shrugged. "So what do you say? Think I can help?"

Jason stared at him blankly, slowly turning to exchange a look with a smugly grinning Caden. "Is he serious?"

Caden just shrugged and grinned wider.

Jason turned back to Alex. "Hell yes you can help." He chewed his lower lip. "Say…that ring can create anything you can think of, right?"

Alex nodded. "As long as I understand how it works."

With a deep breath, mind still racing to process everything he'd just been told, Jason smiled and leaned in close as the others did the same.

"Tell me," said Jason, "what do you know about tracking trans-dimensional energy?"

* * *

AN: Hello all and welcome to part 2 of the _Tomorrow Knight_ series!

I have been dying to write this chapter and this introduction for _years_, ever since I first dreamed up Alex's character. The idea of the Blue Lanterns has always fascinated me, and I really wanted to tap into that lore while making one a useful character without the restrictions placed on them by their own rings. The means I use to explain that may sound like a cop-out, but trust me, it'll make sense later when we delve a bit more into Alex's "royal" background.

As every good comic fan knows, a hero is only as good as his villains, and the Tomorrow Knight is going to be facing down quite a few. However, the arch-nemesis is the most important, and coming up with one for him was a labor of love. It may not seem so just yet, but Janus is among the most complex, multifaceted characters I have ever written; and certainly among the most multifaceted villains. Suffice to say, this will not be the last time this story is told from his point of view.

I hope the story is making sense so far. There are going to be a _lot_ of moving pieces in _Vagabonds_, so hold onto your hats and try to keep up. For now, I hope you enjoyed this first chapter and are looking forward to the next, because this opening story arc is going to be _**NUTS**_.

Let's kick off summer with a bang.

Drake out.

Musical Inspirations:

Mass Effect: Andromeda - A Better Beginning: start-2:10—dying/memories of Mom/the wellspring/reaching out, 2:10-2:40—the Oath, 2:40-3:09—ripped from death/good as new, 3:09-3:40—taking off/the light of hope/having a choice/flying cross, 3:40-end—the Blue Lantern of Earth/"everything's going to be okay..."

P.S.: If it isn't readily apparent, or you're too ADHD to have read the summary, this is a sequel story to _The Tomorrow Knight: Origins_. So if you haven't read that yet, go onto my author page and get caught up, or none of this is going to make any kind of sense. Ciao!


	2. Vagabond Origins: The White Revenant

After Jason's disastrous outing when he'd lost his powers last year, Bruce had made a point of planting a modified tracker in his suit, this time between the layers of armor that would shield it from damage and EMPs. He had told Jason about this one, and followed up with a stern warning not to attempt to remove it. Considering what had happened just a few days ago in Singapore, he wasn't likely to disobey anytime soon, even if he did go off the reservation. Thus, it was child's play for Cass to track him to Atlanta and use the Watchtower teleporters to arrive just after him, where she waited nearby in disguise and listened in on his interactions with Caden and Alex.

Was it a little underhanded? Sure. An invasion of privacy? Most likely. But if he thought he could go after Janus without her, he was sorely mistaken.

A little after Alex finished with his story, the three rose from their booth, the oldest talking to Jason in animated tones. They passed her on the way to the exit, sidling out one after the next as she prepared to follow. She gave just enough space before standing and moving out a different exit, predicting where they would be headed next given the privacy needed for this conversation.

"The short answer is…nothing. I know nothing about trans-dimensional energy, but from the roots of the word, I can guess that this has to do with transporting matter across dimensions."

Jason nodded to Alex as the trio strode out of the latter's restaurant. "Matter or energy, yes, and this can actually be used to transport those within the same dimension as well." He pulled out his PDA and tabbed over to a case file watermarked with the bat-symbol. "When Cass and I vanished in Singapore, the rest of the team used every piece of equipment they had to analyze the area for any trace energies or signs of where we had gone. What they found was a unique trans-dimensional energy signature, but with the Justice League occupied with the disintegrating situation in Bialya, they've been a little too busy to track it down."

Alex frowned and stroked his chin. "And you thought I might be able to use my ring to find similar signatures."

Jason sighed. "That was my hope."

"Well…you were right."

"Huh?"

Alex smiled. "I may not know a thing about trans-dimensional energy, but my ring gives me access to a galactic database of science and technical writing from thousands of alien cultures. Add to that the fact that this info can be uploaded directly into my head, and I should be able to project an appropriate device in a few minutes." He chewed his lower lip. "I imagine we'll have to be in low orbit to scan the whole planet though."

Jason grinned. "Then what are we waiting for?"

Caden arched an eyebrow at them. "Wait—we're seriously doing this? Now?"

"Well yeah. Better we go after him than wait for him to recover."

Drake frowned. "He regenerated from being gutted almost instantly."

"Yeah, when I still didn't have my powers. He _bolted_ once I got 'em back. That can't have been a mistake, not for someone with his experience." Jason frowned. "He's scared, or at least he was in that moment, and I'm not about to give him the chance to readjust before we bring down the hammer."

Caden sighed hard, brandishing a chrome-plated Sig Sauer from beneath his jacket. "Fair enough. Let's do it."

He tucked the pistol into a magnetic holster at his side, him and Jason drawing close to Alex as his ring began to glow. Frowning, Cass withdrew a little further and made sure to keep out of sight while watching from a distance as the trio was encased in a glowing bubble of blue energy and slowly began to float. Then that slow levitation ramped up exponentially, and they shot into low orbit in a matter of seconds. Cass pulled her PDA out and accessed the location data on Jason's armor, relieved to find that the WayneTech satellites were still tracking his position. All she could do now was wait for them to get back planetside.

…

Jason had never seen a Blue Lantern work up close and personal. He'd been around a few Greens growing up, but the aura that surrounded Alex was _completely_ different. Like, literally, he felt different the more Alex used his powers, and within the bubble…well, to say he felt the most comfortable he'd been in a while would be an understatement. Despite this, another part of Jason was uneasy, as he always was when someone or something altered his emotions, no matter how benevolently. He tried his best to stamp down on that overly paranoid part of himself (no doubt inherited from his father); Caden was friends with this guy and he was even less keen on emotional or mental manipulation.

If he was good enough for the eldest living Drake, he was good enough for Jason.

With some considerable mental effort, he muscled down his unease and accepted the warmth emitted by his newest ally. The blue glow of Alex's eyes drew his attention, a closer look revealing that he was looking at an overlay like holographic contacts, his eyes rapidly moving back and forth. Too rapidly to be reading, almost like he was…_dreaming_. Jason knew the human brain processed things in a different way while in the REM state; was that how the galactic database interfaced with his neural network? If so, he could understand how Alex was so sure of his retention speed with regard to constructing a device complex enough to track Janus' portals.

Indeed, less than five minutes after he began, the overlay on Alex's eyes faded to the more normal nuanced blue, and his gaze focused on the pair in his bubble. "I have it," he said. "Just give me a moment to check your parameters."

He reached out to Jason, who offered his PDA for analysis. While Alex gave the data a read, Jason unstrapped his pack and donned his armor, just tucking the helmet under his arm when the Blue Lantern was finished.

"I think I've got it. Strange…these readings fall within the Zeta spectrum."

Jason nodded with a frown. "Yeah, that's why we need a device that's fine-tuned to this particular bandwidth."

"If not," Caden chimed in, "you're gonna get a _lot_ of false positives. The Justice League teleporters use energy from all over that spectrum, though on average they prefer higher bandwidth; less energy expended that way."

"Right," Alex said, frowning in focus as he raised his left hand. "A minute of silence, if you would. I've never produced something quite this complex before."

He didn't even have to ask. Jason was fascinated by the novelty of this experience, just as much as (he imagined) Alex was. The blue ring's glow intensified slightly, a thin stream of translucent energy projecting from its centerpiece, spreading outward in opposite-flowing waves that came crashing back together some three feet in front of him. The chaotic waves overlapped and roiled in an amorphous mass of sapphire light, the edges sharpening with a slight narrowing of Alex's eyes, his focus highly visible. Tendrils of hard-light from either side of the projection interlocked and twisted around each other, going taut and drawing each end into a particular pattern, like an intricate rope knot.

The end design was utterly alien (though considering where the designs for it probably came from, that was hardly surprising), but Jason had little doubt it would do the job. The only question now was how long it would take. When the projection was finished, Alex took another moment or two, then breathed a faint sigh of relief.

"All right. The projection is looped; it's self-sustaining now. All we have to do is wait."

Jason smirked as he took back his PDA. "Maybe not as long as you think." His fingers flew over the screen. "Here, link your projection to these three frequencies. It'll network the device to WayneTech's geosynchronous satellites, hopefully speed up the scan."

"You got it."

A moment later, it was done, leaving the trio to stare into the split horizon of their low orbiting position. On one side were the gradations of blue on the edge of Earth's curve, on the other the vast expanse of space.

"The powers are cool and all," Alex mused wryly, "but as far as perks go…you can't beat this view."

"No," Caden breathed in awe, "you really can't."

Around the edge of the horizon was the normally blinding glow of the setting sun, muted by the built-in filters of Alex's forcefield. Jason stared at it for a good minute or two, able to make out the faintest hints of its constantly roiling surface when his reverie was interrupted.

"Got something!" Alex exclaimed excitedly. "And it's a fresh one."

Jason's heart hammered in his chest. "Already?" he asked, voice shaking slightly. "Where?"

Caden's lips pursed as he looked at the device's screen, the readout overlaid on a projection of Earth's surface. "Looks like…oh crap."

"What?"

"San Francisco, less than four miles from Titans Tower."

Jason's blood ran cold. "Damian is there right now. Who here thinks that's a coincidence."

No one raised their hand.

Jace turned to Alex. "How fast can you get us to San Fran?"

Alex smirked. "Faster than light from the sun."

And with that, they dropped like a rock. At least, that's what it felt like at first. It took Jason a second or two to realize that their descent was angular—with the path of Earth's rotation, using the spin to accelerate well beyond what the planet's gravity well alone could pull. As a result, Jason quickly saw the West Coast approaching much faster than was safe. For anyone who had to obey the laws of physics, that is. Alex, on the other hand, just had to apply an "elementary" antigravity field to his bubble, and they were floating along toward their target location.

Still at a breakneck speed, of course, but at least Jason could breathe now. It always put him somewhat ill at ease to be flying under someone else's power, especially at speeds and with maneuvers that he couldn't pull off himself. As they approached the target, however, all those concerns flew to the back of his mind. When his helmet came on, so did what he affectionately called "hunter mode." Damian called it tunnel vision. Well, if Jason was right about what was about to happen, his ornery brother would soon be glad of that hyper-focus.

They touched down a block or two away from the alley where Alex had pinpointed the signature, Jason turning to his two compatriots with a stern look.

"You both know as much as I do, so you can assume that Janus will be expecting us, but he fought one-on-one last time, not three-on-one. Stay spread out as much as possible—that should limit his ability to alter your timescale—and keep your distance. The full extent of his powers is unknown even to his own kind, so expect the worst to a power of _stupid_."

Alex and Caden stared at him blankly.

Jason sighed hard. "Just pepper him from afar and try not to hit me." He brandished his sword, allowing the sun's light to glint off the flat of the blade for a moment before collapsing it. "I'll take care of the rest."

"And if he teleports again?" Caden asked.

Jason scowled. "Then Alex scans again and we run him down until he exhausts himself. One way or another, this ends tonight."

His more seasoned partners exchanged a wary look, then shrugged as they silently agreed to follow his lead for now, Caden pulling a black balaclava over his features. It wasn't until they reached the edge of the alley in question that Jason caught a glimpse of anything resembling life, and when he did…well…

"Stupid, stupid, stupid…_monkey_ suit!"

The three stopped in their tracks as they stared at the back of a young man struggling to muscle his way out of an exceedingly tight business suit. He hemmed and hawed over how to get it off, then groaned and stood up straight. A moment later, his entire form seemed to fade from vision for a moment, as if he had suddenly melded with his environment like a poorly splashed watercolor painting. Then he was solid again, and the black suit was on the ground, along with his mirror-shine shoes, leaving him in boxer briefs and not much else. Their observation suddenly became wholly awkward even as Jason's hackles rose at the speed at which the stranger gathered his clothes and stuck them in some sort of self-vacuuming bag.

He stuffed it into a leather messenger bag on his hip, pulling out another vacuum bag and emptying it. In the blink of an eye, he was dressed head to toe in something that probably should've been left back in the 50s—a black greaser jacket whose zipper he left open, revealing a gray-and-red Blüdhaven Bloodhounds t-shirt complemented by a boot-cut charcoal jeans. The whole thing was capped off with leather sneakers that would look _extremely_ expensive and high-end if not for the garish and downright _obnoxious_ silver lightning bolts stitched to their sides with thick, dark blue thread.

His hair was a strange steel-gray, despite his appearance betraying maybe twenty years of age, and his ruddy complexion was a few shades darker than Jason. Or, well, what Jason would probably look like if he got a _really_ dark tan. Nothing about him looked like Janus had in Bialya.

It meant nothing.

Janus was both Olympian and Titan. Fooling the eyes of mortals was the only thing _both_ had in common other than their propensity for destroying the planet. He gave the others a discreet nod, floating up to hide in the shadow of a nearby building as he made his approach. The stranger whistled and twirled about for a moment before ambling toward one end of the alley without a care in the world. Every care imaginable forced him to halt when Jason descended in a silvery blur and landed less than four feet in front of him. Jason itched to hold his sword, but even with the energy signature and the stranger's speed, he couldn't be sure just yet. The surprise in his—he was close enough to see gray—eyes seemed real enough, but surprise didn't equate innocence.

Alex and Caden flanked him from the other end, one high, one low; boxing him in. He looked around, meeting their eyes briefly before returning his gaze to Jason with a sigh.

"So I guess you're the welcoming committee."

Even his _voice_ was different—smoother, slower, like every word was carefully selected despite his abilities.

"Who are _you_ all?" he asked, staring right at Jason.

The Knight snarled. "Like you don't know."

The stranger put a hand on his chin, humming as he looked the boy up and down. "Well…" he jerked a thumb behind him, "_he's_ obviously a Blue Lantern…" he gave Caden a dubious look, "don't know about the bank robber over here, and _you_ are…gimme a sec…" He stroked his chin a few more times before his eyes lit up and he grinned ear to ear. "You're a Bat. With _powers_. What a novel idea. So what do they call you, 'wings?'" He waved at the silver-on-red emblem on Jason's chest.

He gave the stranger a flat look. "The Tomorrow Knight."

The young man stared wide-eyed. "The To—" his head shook, "—wow. That is a mouthful."

"Bite me," Jason mumbled, blushing slightly. "What are you doing in the Titans' territory?"

He blinked, arching an eyebrow. "Just passing through. Why, you lookin' for me?"

TK took a threatening step toward him. "Should I be?"

The man's expression was absolutely unreadable as he processed the question. "Not unless Luke Carlisle has a bounty on his head."

Alex frowned. "Who?"

He glanced back at the Lantern. "Lucas Carlisle, me." He looked between both sides. "You really _don't_ know who I am." He grinned, sticking both thumbs up. "Great. No evil dopplers this time."

Frowning, Jason eyed him with a narrow gaze. "Jokes in a tense moment. You're deflecting."

"Luke" blinked. "Now why would you say that?"

"Because it's what _I_ do." He took another step toward him. "'Fess up, 'Lucas.' You can change your name, change your face, but you can't change your signature."

"My what?"

Jason clenched his teeth, hissing, "Your energy. The portals. I_ know_ it's you. Drop the act."

Lucas stared at him, frowning. He leaned back slightly, projecting his voice at the other two. "This one's not exactly socialized, is he?"

"Hey!" Jason grabbed his wrist, gripping hard enough to leave bruises on mere mortals. "You can't weasel your way out of this."

Lucas flinched at his grip. "Let. Go."

"Ja—" Alex cleared his throat, "—Knight, I'm not sure he's—"

Jason ignored him, hissing his words. "You're going to pay for what you did to Cass, you bastard."

"Dude," Lucas groaned, "I know like a dozen Casses, you're gonna have to be _slightly_ more specifi—"

_Bam!_

Alex and Caden gaped at Jason and the spot where Lucas used to be. Used to be…mainly because Jason _falcon punched _him into a dumpster in the middle of the alley where he'd gotten changed. Their stares switched between the Knight and the immobile man slumped over in the crater left in the metal by his body.

"Oi!" Caden shouted. "Was that entirely necessary?"

Jason rolled his eyes. "He was being evasive."

"If I punched everyone who was evasive during an interview," Alex scolded, "I'd have been kicked off the force long before I got shot."

"And did you have to punch him that _hard_?" Caden added. "What if you're wrong?"

TK threw his hands up. "I held back!"

Their glares intensified.

Lucas let out a groan that could've been a wheeze.

Jason made a noncommittal grunt and waved at his still-immobile victim. "See? He's fine."

Slowly, painfully, Lucas dragged himself out of the crater to land on all fours, gingerly rising to a kneeling position. Suddenly, the air itself seemed charged, not only with the rising tension, but tangible _power_.

"Just remember…" Carlisle said coolly, threateningly.

And in the blink of an eye—Lucas' lightning-rimmed-eyes—Jason realized his mistake.

"…you asked for this."

The alley _exploded_ with a blast of air as Luke _vanished_ in a gray-and-black blur, trailing silver lightning the whole way. Caden was bowled over by the gust of wind from the backblast alone, hitting the pavement back-first and nearly losing hold on his pistol.

"A speedster," he growled, turning his glare on Jason. "You just _had_ to piss off a speedster!"

Caden tried to lead the blur with his weapon only for it to vanish from his hand a split-second later. An annoyed snort left his lungs as he drew one of his knives. It too left his grip before he could do a thing.

"For the love of—"

The blur bowled him over this time, sending him flying into a tumbling roll across the alleyway. Jason grit his teeth, pushing his speed of perception to the limit and managing to make out Lucas' sprinting form amid all the lightning and chaos. He lunged forward, right into the speedster's path, and swung for his head in a hook that should've stopped him in his tracks. Instead, he watched wide-eyed as Luke bent over backwards and let his fist fly past his nose with a toothy, taunting grin. A split-second later, he was knocked face-first into a brick wall, swinging behind himself instinctively and hitting nothing but air.

Alex was a little smarter, opting instead to send multiple tendril-like projections after him in an attempt to trip him up, but as he spiraled around the walls of the buildings, he kept moving faster and faster until his form was completely indistinguishable. At least to a mere human. As powerful as he was, Alex's ring could only work as fast as his mind, and he was a little more than outclassed. Narrowing his eyes, Jason's feet left the ground as he analyzed the speedster's path for patterns and tried to time his next strike just so…

His fist smashed into a wall right behind Lucas, missing a direct hit, but the shockwaves from the blow made his feet leave the wall, leaving him vulnerable to a midair snag and throw by Alex. Jason threw a trio of ensnarement batarangs into his flight path, meaning to tie him to a wall. The speedster's body became a blur once more, despite having no physical anchor, and the trick weapons passed right through him, impacting uselessly on the far end of the alley. Down below, Caden leapt for Lucas' impact point, managing to tackle him before his feet hit the ground. He pulled the pin from a flashbang grenade—speedsters had one hell of a time getting around without sight—when Luke snatched the actual grenade portion and launched it over the rooftops with a flick of his wrist, leaving Caden with the pin and safety fin as he darted away.

Alex was ready for him this time, projecting a massive array of fans that created a backdraft and enough drag force to slow his ascent up a wall so Jason could get a clear shot at him. He anchored the end of his grapnel barb to a bola and hurled it with all his might, wrapping the speedster's right shoulder and arm, then swinging him toward the ground where he slammed back-first into the pavement. Groaning, Luke rolled out of the loop a little sluggishly, and then he did something Jason had never seen before. Planting both hands palms-first on the ground, he began to vibrate his arms, not quite enough to phase, but enough so that silvery arcs of electricity began sparking along the appendages toward the ground.

And _from_ the ground.

His eyes slipped shut as his right hand left the pavement, waving just inches over its surface, connected only by the back-and-forth motion of silver lightning, which slowly crawled up and engulfed his entire body. He slowly curled it into a fist, a dangerous smirk on his face as his eyes opened. But where before he'd had gray irises rimmed with lightning, now…

Now his eyes _were_ the lightning.

And then there were a _thousand_ of him filling that alley. Jason scowled. He'd _seen_ this trick before: the speed mirage. Carlisle was running back and forth between a thousand different locations faster than the mortal eye could distinguish.

_And,_ Jason thought with a curse, _apparently faster than _my_ eyes can distinguish._

Caden glanced this way and that, unarmed and completely at a loss. A right cross from out of nowhere laid him out flat. Taking a breath, Alex tried to scan the alley for the real Lucas with his ring, only to gasp when one of the mirages suddenly got a _whole_ lot closer. He instinctively fired off a ring blast, missing just barely and swinging for him with a left cross. His fist passed through Lucas' outstretched hand—or rather, Luke's hand passed through _him_…along with the rest of his body. Alex blinked, and suddenly, his left hand felt _naked_.

His sudden uncontrolled descent explained why; the speedster had _pilfered_ his ring mid-phase—fifty feet off the ground.

Given the circumstances, Alex felt absolutely no shame in screaming at the top of his lungs until a firm grip around his shoulders arrested his fall and gently laid him on the ground. Jason straightened up, glancing around at the more solid-looking mirages, since they were sites more recently visited. He was so focused on making out the most recent path taken that he failed to hear the lightning bolt streaking at his back until it struck him full-force. Despite his armor's integrated insulation, it still felt like getting tased as a human. Every nerve felt like it was on fire, his entire body seized up, and he _jiggled_ in place like a bug on a zapper, unable to so much as scream.

And then his helmeted head was grabbed and _smashed_ into the pavement at Mach speed, and all he knew was darkness.

…

Alex gaped wide-eyed as the speedster held Jason's head to the ground for a moment to ensure he was out, then slowly rose to his feet, looking over his handiwork as his mirages faded to nothingness. A smug grin spread over his lips as he glanced between the two unconscious heroes, then shrugged his arms as if to say, "What are you gonna do?"

The next few minutes were a literal blur of motion and darkness, and before he knew it, Alex was in a darkened warehouse with only one active light illuminating him, Jason, and Caden; the latter of whom were chained to each other back-to-back. They were still out cold by the time Alex heard the soft clicks of approaching steps. The crunch of something being bitten followed a moment later, and he could just make out a faint silhouette before suddenly, Carlisle was standing in the center of the light. He stared down at Alex's sitting form curiously, chewing his apple at a sedated speed rather uncharacteristic for speedsters.

At which point Alex realized he wasn't chained to anything.

He glanced down at his free hands, meeting Lucas' eyes with an inquisitive look. "Why leave _me_ free?"

Luke chewed a little longer, swallowing before giving his answer. "Two reasons. First, without your ring, you're significantly less of a threat. Second, you're a Blue Lantern. Of these three, I expect you'd be the most level-headed."

Alex thought for a moment or two. "Ahhh…" his head tentatively bounced back and forth before he shrugged, "yeah you're not wrong." He frowned again. "Who are you, really? I've never heard of a Lucas Carlisle before."

"I figured as much." He smirked. "Seems to be a constant trend wherever I go." His mirth faded as his gaze drifted over to Jason's helmetless form. "People trying to kill me out of the gate, not so much." He shrugged and gave Alex a rueful smile. "Well it's…kinda fifty-fifty, if I'm being honest." Lucas frowned. "Still, usually it's attack-on-sight just on principle." He looked back at Jason. "This seems personal."

Alex sighed. "Case of mistaken identity, I'm afraid."

"I figured that much, but who did he think I was?"

"Rogue god named Janus," Alex explained flatly. "Janus murdered his parents in the future. Then tried to murder him in the present. And nearly murdered his sister."

Luke's eyebrows steadily climbed upward with every statement. His head tilted a bit when Alex was done. "Yeah, that'll do it." He sighed hard. "Guess I better put this to bed, then." He knelt at Jason's side and tapped the side of his no-doubt aching skull. "Oi, tantrum! Wakey wakey!"

The kid jerked awake, haphazardly glancing around until his eyes turned toward the bright light and he cringed. "The hell…"

"We got a lot to talk about, and I'm only explaining this once."

Caden groaned himself awake, having been shaken up by Jason's jerky motions. He went perfectly still for a full two seconds before speaking in complete deadpan. "Can I just be dead? Because that would be significantly less embarrassing than that utter _debacle_."

Lucas gently rapped his knuckles on the side of Caden's head. "Sorry thuggy, not in the cards just yet." He frowned and pulled off his balaclava, eyes widening a moment later. "Hey! I _thought_ that voice sounded familiar. You're Caden Drake."

Drake eyed him suspiciously. "Do I know you?"

"Nope. But I know you. Or, well, a version of you anyway."

Jason scowled. "If you're going to do us in, just get on with it already!"

Lucas groaned and lolled his head back. "Oh for the love of…I am not this…Janus character, or whoever the hell you've mistaken me for."

"I would've thought that was pretty obvious by now," Caden growled.

Jason's cowled features glared at Luke. "I'm still not a hundred percent convinced."

"_Seriously_?!" Drake half-yelled.

"Janus manipulated lightning when I fought him last, and I don't know exactly how immune I am to his time-warp." Jason's eyes narrowed. "He could've used his powers to mimic that of a speedster, get us to let our guard down."

Alex and Luke were about to protest when a new voice cut them off.

"He wasn't faking it."

Every eye turned to the pervasive shadows in the warehouse, a section of them at the edge of the light melting into a familiar feminine form.

"_Sis_?!" Jason shouted. "What are you _doing_ here?! You're supposed to be—"

"What, in bed? Like an invalid?"

His eyes narrowed. "Does Dad know you're here?"

She hesitated. "I don't need his permission to live my life."

Jason shrugged, feigning concession. "Okay. Does _Mom_ know you're here?"

She was silent.

"And _that's _what I thought." His lips pursed. "Wait…you were _watching_, weren't you? You've been tracking me this whole time."

"Of course."

He sputtered indignantly as Alex watched their exchange with no small amount of amusement. "We were getting our asses handed to us and you just _stood there_?"

She put her hands on her hips. "If you weren't so insistent on carrying the weight of the world on your shoulders, I could've been there to tell you he wasn't lying." Her lensed eyes turned to a gaping Lucas. "At least, not about not knowing you."

"Does your body language thingy even _work_ on Olympians?" Caden asked curiously.

"I avoided his every move until he warped time," she answered bitterly, arms crossed. Her gaze returned to the speedster. "His diction, his mannerisms, everything is all wrong. You can change your appearance all you want, but no one is _that_ good of an actor."

Lucas huffed in relief and waved at her. "_Thank_ you!"

Alex cleared his throat, nodding in the newcomer's direction. "This is uh—"

"Cassandra Cain," Luke interrupted, "Batgirl." His lips pursed. "Or do you go by Black Bat now?"

The speedster seemed completely oblivious to the way all _four_ of them began staring at him until Cass spoke.

"How—"

"This isn't the first alternate I've visited," he interrupted with a smirk and a shrug. "I'm friends with the Bat Family in most of them." His eyes narrowed as he looked between Jason and Cass. "Wait…sis? With your powers, I'm guessing it's not biologically, which makes you…" his eyes widened in glee, "_oh_! You're Bruce and Di's kid!"

Jason gaped at him.

Lucas pumped his fists in the air triumphantly. "Finally! A timeline where I can be happy about those two."

Alex looked to Lucas, then to Cass, then Jason, and to Caden (who looked vaguely like he understood what was going on).

"_What is happening right now_?" Alex exclaimed.

Caden chuckled incredulously. "He's a breacher, Alex."

"A what?"

"A visitor from another timeline," Cass explained. "From another version of Earth."

Alex's eyebrows shot upward. "You're talking about Multiverse Theory."

"Correction," Lucas said, "Multiverse _fact_. I've spent roughly the last nine months mapping it."

"Then why were we led to you by a trans-dimensional energy surge on the Zeta band?" Jason demanded. "Speedsters don't give off Zeta-band emissions."

"Not usually," Luke conceded. "However, there are exceptions. Tell me, the Zeta band—does it fall within normal parameters for EM radiation?"

Jason snorted. "Of course not. If it did, the League wouldn't be able to teleport."

"So…they're extra-relative emissions…superluminal, faster-than-light."

"Yeah, so?"

"Know what else is superluminal?"

"Tachyons," Caden supplied. "You juice yourself up with tachyon particles to build the speed necessary to jump dimensions."

Lucas snapped his fingers and pointed at Caden. "Bingo! Give the man a prize."

"And tachyons fall within the Zeta band," Jason concluded with a groan as he let his head loll back, unintentionally banging it against Caden's.

"Ow."

Jason looked down at their restraints, giving Lucas a look. "You know I can get out of this."

He shrugged. "I figured as much, but doubt _he_ could survive the strain of being on the receiving end of your strength unharmed." Luke pointed at (the enhanced but very-human) Caden.

Jason frowned. "Fair enough."

Something on his arm popped, and the chains sheared with a light snap of his elbow as his arm-blades sliced through them.

Lucas deadpanned. "Showoff."

"Says the guy who made a thousand duplicates of himself after showboating his ass off."

"Ladies," Caden interrupted, "you're both pretty, but unless you're planning on whipping out the rulers, I suggest we get back to our original objective." He turned to Alex. "San Francisco was a false positive, but were there any other results on that scan?"

Alex stood up and held out his left hand, his ring flying out of Lucas' jacket and returning to his middle finger. Lucas stared at his hand, then his face as his Lantern uniform materialized around his body.

"You were biding your time all along," Luke said.

Alex shrugged. "Of course." He projected the ring's memory of the previous scan, suppressing a curse. "I got a little overexcited, cut the scan off after we found _him_." He nodded at Luke. "I'll have to run it again."

"Low orbit?" Cass asked.

His head shook. "Now that I have access to WayneTech satellites, I should be able to bounce the signals with minimal noise loss." In moments, he did just that, forging the projection much more easily now that he had done it once. "That'll run itself and alert us if we get another hit."

"What makes you so sure you will?" Lucas asked.

"Janus is on the move," Jason said darkly. "When last we met, I proved he was vulnerable, and he knows it."

"As impulsive as he's been," Caden said, nodding at Jason, "I have to agree. Now that the Decembrists have been exposed, he'll be looking to shore up his resources. The FBI and I have been hammering what little influence he has left in Star City into dust, but if he manages to reinforce his allies there, we'll be right back to square one."

"So we're mounting a preemptive strike." Jason sent Cass a sideways look. "Which is why _you_ shouldn't be here."

"If you think I'm letting you go after him alone—"

Jason grabbed her arms. "Sis, please."

"_No_."

She reached up and flicked a switch on the side of her cowl, separating it into two halves. The upper half was much like the Batman's, and the lower similar to a ninja mask (that also doubled as a toxin filter). Both halves came off, the lower section sitting against her collarbone, the upper pulled back like a hood. No point keeping it on since the only "unknown" apparently already knew her identity. And Jason _needed_ to see her face to understand.

Cass grabbed the sides of his head, looking him dead in the eye. "What happened to me was _not your fault_. It was my choice to stand with you, it has _always_ been my choice, it will always _be_ my choice." She smiled. "And I would make it again because I know you would do the same for me. You _did_ do the same for me." She tapped his nose, mild scolding in her tone. "So don't be a hypocrite; it doesn't suit you."

Jason stared her down a bit longer before sighing hard. "Okay."

With that emotional crisis resolved for the moment, Alex's attention returned to the speedster who was sitting on a wooden crate and snacking on the rest of his apple.

"What I can't figure out is why someone would decide to map the _Multiverse_," Alex said. "If you know so much about it, you know you've set an impossible task for yourself. It's _infinite_. Supposedly."

Something flickered across Lucas' eyes, something that he'd seen in Caden's all too many times. And then came the equally familiar response.

Deflection with humor.

"That's the fun of it," Luke said, grinning. "Infinite worlds with infinite possibility means I get infinite adventures. With some similarities, mind you, but no two worlds I've visited are ever exactly the same."

"Then which one are _you_ from?" Jason asked.

Lucas hissed a breath through his teeth. "Well, that depends on how you mean 'from.' If you mean where I was born, that would be…Earth-14. If you mean where I actually call home, well, I call it Earth-Theta—or Earth-T. That also happens to be where I acquired my powers."

Alex grinned. "Ooh, are we getting an origin story?"

Caden arched an eyebrow at him. "_Someone's_ excited."

"Hey, I may be a Lantern, but the only people I really _know_ in this world are you and the Bats, and them only peripherally." His arms crossed. "So excuse me if I nerd out a little."

Lucas watched their exchange with unveiled amusement, waiting until their attention returned to him before speaking. "Hmm…where to begin?" His gray eyes rapidly moved back and forth with the speed of his thoughts. "Well, I suppose I should start from when and where I got my powers. Like most speedsters, my story begins with a lightning bolt. Unlike most, however, that lightning bolt didn't nearly kill me; it saved my life." His lips twitched with amusement. "One of a few reasons why they call me the White Revenant," he shrugged, "Rev for short."

Jason snorted and nudged Caden with his elbow. "And you thought _my_ name was a mouthful."

Caden leaned toward him and whispered back, "They're the same syllable count."

Appearing not to hear them, Lucas continued. "I didn't understand the context until years later, and even then I only knew part of the story. Until I was almost eighteen, I couldn't remember anything before landing on Earth-T, and that was at thirteen. Six months later, I had a…near-death experience that ended with me being struck by lightning. When I woke up, I could feel the Speedforce coursing through me. Three years later, the Titans of Earth-T took me in, and a year later, I accidentally discovered my ability to traverse time."

Luke frowned at Jason. "Deadshot-Theta took a shot at Bruce Wayne, and I was in the middle of catching the bullet when I accidentally time-jumped fifteen years into a future where the Batman is dead." His frown deepened. "The rest of the world quickly followed when Ra's al Ghul and his League bumped off Earth's heroes one by one, starting with the speedsters capable of undoing his work. With the help of that future's Nightwing, I managed to return to the moment I left and caught the bullet, but after that I was terrified of any more 'accidents.' Kid Flash suggested I go train with his mentor in Central City, but when I got there…well, let's just say I got a little more than I bargained for."

…

Well _this_ day just went from bad to worse.

_ The gloved hand holding him off the ground by his throat certainly seemed to agree, and the glowing red eyes that bore into his narrowed as he gasped for air._

_ "Where is he?" snarled Lucas' assailant. He slammed Luke against a wall and pinned him there. "_Where_?!"_

_ Even if he had the air to speak, Lucas couldn't have answered him. Not truthfully, anyway. The Flash had stepped out some minutes prior, claiming the need to grab something he'd stowed away for safekeeping when Rev demonstrated a far more unstable temporal jump threshold than any other speedster he'd seen. He had an even worse time keeping focus on the here and now than Barry did when he first started out. One of the greatest blessings of being trained by Deathstroke and then the Batman's first apprentice was his ability to think fifteen moves ahead. Well, with the speed of his mind it was more like _fifty_, but still. _

_The problem with that, especially at extremely high speeds, was the drift of his focus to future events rather than remaining in the moment. Ordinary humans would just find themselves reacting slower to events happening around them._

_Speedsters had a nasty habit of time-jumping by accident._

_Thus, until he learned to curb that tendency or at least keep it from interfering with his powers, Barry had intended to give him a device meant to help manage his speed, keep it from reaching the relativistic energy levels necessary for time travel. Given who currently had his hand wrapped around Luke's throat, he had a pretty good notion that that device was why he was currently being choked out._

"_I won't ask again," snarled the man in yellow, his empty hand vibrating at his side until it became an indistinct dark blur._

_Rev knew what he was being threatened with: if he stuck that hand in the boy's chest and let it solidify just slightly, his atoms would displace Luke's, which would cause some serious internal damage. Likely lethal._

_He was saved from having to make up an answer when a red blur slammed into the hostile speedster, throwing him into a far wall that caved in with his impact. The Flash shot back to Luke's side, helping him stand before turning his attention to the recovering interloper._

"_Thawne," Barry hissed. "What do you want?"_

_The Reverse-Flash's glowing eyes flickered to something on Barry's belt, a vicious smile spreading over his masked face. "Oh, I already have what I want…or, I will shortly."_

_Lucas followed his line of sight to see a small, disc-like device hanging from the Flash's waist. Barry's hand drifted down to it, eyes narrowing as he adopted a defensive stance. At the same moment, both seemed to understand exactly what Thawne wanted and _why_. Not since Barry's first days as the Flash had his arch-nemesis been able to consistently outpace him. However, that device, tweaked and applied properly, could force blocks on Barry's speed, keep him from accessing the power he needed to match Reverse-Flash. Suddenly Luke understood exactly why Barry kept the damn thing under lock and key._

"_Bail out, Flash," Rev said. "He can't get his hands on—"_

"_He'll kill you if I leave," Barry interrupted, "and he knows I know that."_

_Thawne grinned madly, taking slow, taunting steps toward the pair as they coiled up, ready for anything. The White Revenant's heart was beating almost a thousand times a minute, not unusual for combat situations, but this was a million times worse. This was Eobard Thawne, _the_ Reverse-Flash, the single most notorious evil speedster of all time. He hadn't felt this terrified since he turned on Deathstroke…well, actually he'd been more pissed off than terrified then. Perhaps not since his first confrontation with Quint, then…_

_Any other thoughts were quickly banished when Thawne's steps finally came to a stop, his gaze flickering between the two before he gave Rev a dismissive snort. Luke would've been offended if he didn't know how right he was to make it. The Revenant might've had his powers for almost four years, but he still couldn't hope to hold a candle to legends like the Flash and his nemesis. Thawne could kill him before he even knew what was happening; he knew that from the moment the bastard started choking him out._

_And then Professor Zoom cracked his neck and smiled._

_What happened next was pure chaos, a cacophony of red and gold lightning intermixed with opposing blurs of yellow and red. Rev couldn't make out where Barry ended and Thawne began, at least at first, so he stayed out of the way as much as possible. Then he frowned and focused as hard as he could, trying to speed up his perception to at least be able to track the movements of the two…just in case. Miraculously, it worked. Sort of. Instead of two indistinct blurs and coils of lightning, they were _distinctly_ zipping past and smashing into each other, wrecking the room, the furniture, and the equipment strewn about._

_The Flash had chosen to meet at Central City's chapter of STAR Labs, where he did most of the regular physical and Speedforce tests to ensure his health, and as such it was built for this kind of rapid movement. Well, for traversal, that is, not a pitched battle between two godlike speedsters. Thus, stacks of paper and containers holding various materials and equipment exploded into torrents of debris scattered by their rapid movements. Luke focused harder, as if trying to adjust his eyes to a faraway target, which was when he saw Thawne catch Barry's fist, using that point of contact to hurl him back-first into a wall._

_The impact left a sizeable crater behind much like the Flash had with him, though Barry seemed more stunned than he was. To be fair, Thawne hadn't exactly gotten up in a hurry, but unlike the Flash, he would most certainly take advantage of the moment of vulnerability. On pure instinct, Rev lunged toward the Flash's prone form, grabbing him by the shoulders and zipping past right as Reverse-Flash's hand put a fist-sized hole through the deformed drywall. The Flash shot Rev an alarmed look, which was all the warning he got before the wind was knocked out of him and his legs were swept from under him._

_He planted face-first on the tiled floor, quickly pushing himself up to see Barry grappling with Thawne. He headbutted the rogue speedster, flinching a bit, then throwing a hook at his head. Thawne ducked the blow and shot his right hand out at Barry's midsection, but to Rev's surprise, the Flash didn't recoil from the impact. It didn't even seem to have landed. Then he took a closer look at Barry's belt and realized what had happened._

"_Flash, the device!" he screamed._

_Barry's blue eyes went wide a second before Thawne gave them a mocking salute and took off toward the exit. The Flash instantly took off after him, Rev trailing behind and barely managing to keep them in sight. Barry threw his hand back in a halting motion mid-run when they reached the open streets of Central City._

"_Stay here! I'm not kidding!"_

_Rev frowned but ground to a halt, sparks flying from beneath the soles of his friction-proof boots. He watched their chase from a distance, eyes narrowing in suspicion when something about the image just seemed so _familiar_._

Gold lightning trailing behind yellow…

_And then the air in front of Reverse-Flash _exploded_ in a shower of blue light, an all-too-familiar portal into the timestream that he sped into, followed closely by the Flash. At which point Lucas knew _exactly_ why he felt a severe case of _déjà vu_. He _had_ seen this before._

_The night he died._

_With that realization, he sped toward the rapidly collapsing portal without hesitation, vanishing into its infinite depths just in time. Instantly, his surroundings were an indiscernible cacophony of multicolored lightning and images that flew by faster than even his considerable mind could understand. He'd seen something similar twice before, both times during that horrifying incident in the future, and braced himself for the worst. Given that the Flash had managed to follow Thawne into the portal, he could expect that there wouldn't be any damage to the past just yet. All Rev could hope was that Barry would get his hands on that device before the maniac managed to reconfigure it for his purposes._

_If he finally managed to kill Barry…_

_The only other speedster with enough experience to understand how to fight the Reverse-Flash was Jay Garrick, and he was nowhere near fast enough for it to make a difference. Those concerns vanished when he saw the literal light at the end of the tunnel, the collage of images yielding to a cityscape unlike anything he'd ever seen. This…was _not_ the Central City he'd just left. _

_Buildings tall enough to blot out the sky, and floating buildings even higher than that…it was like the sprawling mega cities of the Dredd series, but vertical. Despite the alien nature of the architecture and environment, Lucas knew enough about the Flash's history to recognize where—or rather _when_—he was._

Thawne went back home…to the 25th century.

_It made perfect sense. Here, he'd have all the tools he needed to reconfigure the device he'd stolen from Barry, plus the home field advantage of a city not even Barry would recognize. Or perhaps he would. They'd been enemies for almost a decade, so maybe he'd been here before. It appeared Rev would get the chance to ask, since not even the dark splendor of the futuristic city could hide the tandem lightning trails far ahead of him. They'd abandoned the city streets for the building walls, chasing each other up and down, far and across the skyline, leaping from one structure to the next._

_Rev flinched away from a loudly-honking hovercar on his left, frowning when he saw the pair growing more distant by the millisecond. Eyes narrowing, he turned his attention to the line of hovering vehicles on his side._

I can't match their speed on my own, but maybe…

_His hands began vibrating, electricity sparking and lancing between his fingers until he reached a familiar threshold and reached out with both palms as he passed a particularly large hovertruck, latching his grip on its metal surface. He gasped as a rush of pure energy flooded his system, and he felt his arms enveloped in a "skin" of silver electricity. The truck's driver frowned at his dashboard as his speedometer plummeted suddenly despite the throttle remaining constant, gaping at the speedster who streaked by and did the same to three more hovercars until his entire body was crackling with arcs of lightning._

_The Revenant took a deep breath to steady himself—it felt disorienting every time he did this—electricity-rimmed eyes snapping to the distant lightning trails. Then he exhaled sharply and brought his legs down _hard_. The White Revenant shot off into the distance like lightning—_faster_ than lightning. Every scrap of kinetic energy he'd absorbed from the vehicles had been stored in his cells as potential energy like a battery, converted back to massively enhance his speed when he chose to release it. He'd discovered that power completely by accident when faced with _his_ reverse, an entitled twit named Theodore Quint who hired techy mercenaries to kidnap and steal most of his speed and used it to become the terrorist known as Black Paladin._

_For _months_, the bastard had terrorized the Titans' home in Jump City, with Rev all but helpless to do a thing since he could barely clear 200 mph if he _pushed_ himself—and no longer even generated lightning. And then an explosion caused by his people sent a car flying toward a group of civilians he couldn't get out of the way in time, and he stupidly tried to grab the _car_. Except it stopped in its tracks, and he felt the lightning in his blood once again. The boost hadn't lasted long before he was returned to his weakened state, but it had gotten him thinking._

_The next time Quint was wailing on Luke after getting him alone again, he did the same trick, and to his surprise managed to actually land a hit on him. That repeated over the course of weeks, the Paladin withdrawing every time because Rev just _kept getting faster_. Until Luke noticed that Quint was also getting slower, and he realized that the Paladin was running on stolen speed that was all too happy to be drawn back to its rightful owner. The last time they'd faced each other, he'd taken it _all_ back, and Quint was left no more _super_ than he'd been when Luke snapped his spine by accident the first time he used his powers._

_Of course, his disastrous visit to the future had dispelled any illusions he had that Quint would _stay_ that way, but he hadn't expected to face down another speedster so soon._

_With the added boost, Rev managed to keep their pace and even catch up, especially when the Flash intercepted the thief mid-jump and tackled him through a window. Rev entered through that window a moment later, halting at the edge of the hurricane left in their wake as they sped and spiraled around what looked like a vague approximation of an office space. With the enhancement to his speed, he was able to track their movements much better now, which was how he saw Reverse-Flash club Barry over the head with a fire extinguisher hard enough to send foam exploding in all directions._

_The artificial smoke blinded Rev, but the Flash's pained cries were unmistakable. Gritting his teeth, Lucas charged into the smoke, approximating their position by the sounds of their struggle, and metaphorically crossed his fingers as he struck out with his right fist. _

_The blow connected._

_And Eobard Thawne was sent crashing through a desk, ripping it in half as he ground to a stop. Snarling, he was on his feet in an instant, glaring daggers at Rev, who just chuckled nervously. Then there was pain and a severe lack of air as Reverse-Flash knocked the wind out of him with one punch. Gasping, Rev grit his teeth and powered through the pain, lashing out with several rapid strikes. None met so much as the brush of something solid. Thawne ducked and danced around his punches, bending over backward to dodge a roundhouse aimed at his head. He was smiling the whole time, as if this were just a game._

_Which had the unfortunate tendency of pissing Rev off. Quint had pulled the same crap during their earlier duels and eventually paid for his arrogance. Thus, it got into Luke's head that he could do the same here, so he limited how much energy he spent and waited for Thawne to counterattack. Only when it happened, he wasn't nearly fast enough to try siphoning any of his energy. Attacks came from all sides, from all angles, and he couldn't tell if he was being punched, kicked, or just _slapped really hard_. Probably a mix of all three._

_At any rate, it was a matter of seconds before Lucas was hurled into a row of desks, the furniture squeaking across the floor with his inertia as Barry pounced at Thawne's turned back. The Reverse-Flash turned at the last instant and deflected his punch, using his other hand to grab the Flash's head by one of his cowl's lightning bolts. Those two points of contact were used with Barry's momentum to flip him forward onto his back, landing hard. Thawne phased his right fist, snarling as he drove it toward Barry's head. The Flash vibrated his own hand and met the blow halfway, somehow managing to match Thawne's frequency and hold him there as if their appendages were still solid._

_Rev gaped. _I hadn't even _thought_ of that.

_The Flash snapped his leg up and caught Thawne in the top of his skull with a shin-kick, trying to follow up with a tripping swipe. Thawne leapt over it and drop-kicked Barry in the chest, sending them in opposite directions as Barry skidded across the floor. Reverse-Flash turned his short flight into a smooth backflip, landing in a runner's stance and pouncing on the Flash's prone form. Rev intercepted him halfway with a shoulder charge, spotting something on his belt that held his attention for the split-second before Thawne threw him off. Despite the pain of his rolling impact, Lucas gave the rogue speedster a bloody grin when he finally came to a stop._

_Which was about the time Thawne and Barry both recognized the device clutched in Lucas' left hand._

"_You little—" Thawne growled._

Crack!

_Both speedsters gaped when Lucas vibrated his left hand at a massive rate, fast enough to cause massive cyclic stress to the device and shatter it into now-useless fragments._

_He gave Barry a sheepish smile. "Guess I'll have to learn control the old-fashioned way."_

_The Flash smiled back just slightly before Thawne's roar of rage brought their eyes back to him. In spite of their longstanding enmity, the Reverse-Flash's attention was solely on the Revenant._

"_I would say you'll regret this," Thawne snarled, "but you won't have lived long enough to."_

_With a whir of air and flash of red lightning, he was gone, and Luke breathed a heavy sigh of relief._

"_Ho—ly—shit." Luke collapsed against the nearest solid thing, feeling lightheaded beyond belief as all the blood rushed to his extremities. "I'm alive."_

_Barry was less happy as he marched over to the young speedster. "For now. Take it from me, Thawne doesn't take interlopers lightly." He frowned in thought. "And then there's the way he _phrased_ it…" His eyes snapped wide open as he gasped. "Luke!"_

"_What?!" _

_Rev stood upright in a snap, jaw dropping when he looked down to see his hands slowly fading, becoming translucent, and for a moment of panic, he thought it began to spread. Then he blinked, and his hands were perfectly solid again, a fact he tested by flexing his gloved fingers a few times._

"_Barry," he said, voice shaking, "what the hell just happened?"_

_The Flash stared at him in unveiled horror. "Oh God…he's doing the same thing he tried on me—I think he just killed a past version of you."_

_Rev's eyes went wide. "He _what_?! T-Then how am I still here?"_

_Barry's lips pursed as he grabbed Luke's hands for a closer look. "You're a speedster. To an extent, speedsters exist outside of the normal timestream. It'll take time for the paradox to catch up to you, especially this far into the future, but it _will_ happen if we don't undo whatever he did."_

"_And then?"_

"_And then it'll be as if this version of you never even existed. I probably wouldn't even remember having this conversation."_

_Rev huffed, pacing rapidly. "Where would he have gone? _When_?"_

_Barry frowned at the wall. "He would've aimed for a time and place when you were vulnerable, preferably before you even got your powers to hasten the paradox's effects. But from what I understand, that's a pretty wide window."_

_He shrugged. "Yeah, so what are we supposed to do, stalk me until he shows up?"_

_His head shook. "No, he wouldn't go after you directly. The Speedforce has rules about time travel, and when speedsters break them by interfering directly in past events, they send enforcers to punish them: time wraiths—or if you're particularly unlucky, the Black Flash."_

"_The Black _what_?"_

_Barry tilted his head. "Basically the only grim reaper than can catch a speedster."_

"_Joy."_

"_Yeah, so he would do something small but influential, cause a chain reaction that ends with the same result and none of his direct handiwork. All he'd have to do is make sure no one interferes." Barry frowned. "Think, Rev. Where would he have gone? When were you most isolated, vulnerable?"_

_Lucas thought for barely a second (practically an eternity in speedster time) when every strange sense of foreboding and _déjà vu_ returned, and the answer hit him like a—_

_Rev's gray eyes shot wide open. "Three and a half years ago—from our present, I mean—in Blüdhaven. I was walking alone. There was a truck…"_

_Barry's eyes widened slightly with a nod. "I'm on it."_

"_And I'm coming with you."_

_The older speedster frowned._

"_How else am I supposed to get back?"_

_He sighed. "Fair enough."_

_They took off together, rapidly accelerating until the world around them faded to an indistinct gray blur and the air in front of them erupted with the blinding glow of the Speedforce._

…

_ Lucas Carlisle was _miserable_._

_ For the last six months, he'd been building a list of all the things he didn't have, all the things life had robbed him of. His memories, his family…and now his home. Well, to be fair, he ran away, so it was more like he'd given it up. But he hadn't been welcomed there. He wasn't welcome anywhere. To cap off his absolutely _perfect_ day, it was pouring like the Amazon. And _cold_. And nighttime._

_ So as he crossed a pitch-dark street (despite his startle at just noticing the blinding headlights of a pick-up truck he hadn't seen until it was right on top of him), he wasn't particularly shocked when his right side melded with its front bumper._

_ He rolled over its top, twirling through the air for a moment before landing back-first on the soaked pavement. The freezing water was almost deep enough to cover his ears, yet for all that he barely felt the cold for how suddenly numb his body was. He hadn't even felt the pain of his bones shattering, or his lungs filling with blood. He slowly suffocated in his own juices, and he couldn't even find it in himself to care overmuch. He blinked slowly, eyes flickering aimlessly across the weeping night sky. _

_Then a light erupted in his peripheral vision—or rather, _two_ lights. One red, one gold, at the head of yellow and red blurs. They streaked toward him like bats out of hell, faster than ordinary eyes could track. With the water lapping at his ears and his fading consciousness, he didn't hear the supersonic _crack_ of their passing forms, or the wailing scream of denial as the red blur sped past his shattered body. Somewhere behind him, they vanished in an explosion of blue light, and that should've been the end of it._

_But something remained behind._

_A silvery flicker of energy that slowly traveled up the streams of water that were suddenly frozen midair, leaping and arcing like crackles of electricity, but without a whisper of sound audible above the pounding of rain. Not that he could have heard it at this point anyhow. Even as the energy rose and roiled within the billowing thunderclouds above, his eyes drifted shut and his heart failed at last._

_Until the sky itself roared in outrage, and a spear of silver lightning descended to smite his body._

_His eyes flew open and he took his first breath in over a minute as the lightning plunged beneath his skin, twisting his ruined insides and forcing them right. It latched onto his bones, his muscles, his blood; mutilating his very DNA to house something far greater than himself._

_Something that had been abused by the one being chased through time, who was tackled from the Speedforce back into the present, where he was subjected to every bit of rage mustered by the greatest conduit of its power._

_As quickly as Lucas drew that breath, it was nearly forced from his lungs. Where before, he could feel nothing, now he felt _everything_, and with those feelings came an irrational, uncontrollable terror. A fear he would not later remember, but one that gripped every person chosen by the force of nature he was destined to hold._

_The force of nature whose every scrap the Flash used to rain punishment down on his opposite, every movement a tornado, every blow a clap of thunder. Thawne held him back by nature of skill alone, but even the mighty Reverse-Flash knew he could only withstand his unbridled fury so long._

_The lightning took Luke's body, but it cared little for anything else on his person or in his environment. Amidst the searing pain of his reshaping, his eyes locked onto something that had been launched into the air with the strike: a coin of unknown make or metal, with the crowned visage of a skull on one side and opposing arcs of lightning on the other. The one piece of his past, the one _thing_ he still had left. He ached to reach out for it, but his body would not obey. He was a vessel now for a will not his own, and he would be until his transformation was complete._

_The Flash took a brutal hit to the ribs that normally would've laid him out for hours, but such was his command of the Speedforce and his draw on its power that it formed a shield of sorts around the point of impact. He barely even felt it. That same blow was returned to his enemy, and it threw him careening through several walls at STAR Labs, grinding to a stop in a room devoid of windows or equipment. Just the two of them and a few support columns…and nowhere left to run._

_Lucas clenched his jaw, fighting with all his might to stretch out his hand, to grasp the last shard of the person he used to be, the person he couldn't remember; but all he managed to do was clench his fists in impotence. His single breath built against his chest like a pressure cooker, his lungs heaving and belting a roar fit to challenge the thunder. But amid the pain and frustration and soul-crushing _loneliness_ released in his cry, there were hints of something else that shone as brightly as the lightning dancing in his eyes. _

_Freedom. Hope. Joy._

_In that singular moment, he was not alone, but connected to something far beyond what he could ever have imagined. Across time and space and every fabric and layer of reality, he _felt_ them. The conduits. The _others_ like him. All part of a grand legacy transcending the mortal bonds of the life that had failed him. For that briefest instant, he was happy._

_Then his cry fizzled out, his eyes rolled back into his head, and his body went limp as the energy faded from view and he passed out on the pavement._

_The coin fell and tumbled, flipping end over end as it plummeted through the rain-saturated air. It would fall into the water, dragged along by its current into a drain where it would rust, untouched and forgotten like the boy who had lost it._

_The Revenant had other ideas._

_In a flash of silver lightning, boy and coin vanished from the spot, spirited away on the back of a white blur. Even after all these years, he remembered the hospital and the way there, but had never been able to recall how he arrived the first time. As he laid Lucas' soaked body on a gurney in the ICU, the whole world stood still, and he took a moment to look at the boy's face. The creases and gauntness from stress and malnourishment. The darkness under his eyes. The tension in his face that would not vanish even in slumber._

_The Revenant wanted so desperately to whisper in his ear, to tell him he just had to be patient, that he wouldn't be alone forever; yet to do so would upset the balance of the very thing that had given him a second chance. So he pried Luke's left hand open and pressed the coin into his palm, closing his fingers around it. He laid the hand on Luke's chest, a silent promise that not _all_ was lost, nor ever would be._

_And then the Revenant was gone, running across the flooded streets of Blüdhaven faster than he had dared before. There were no more distractions this time. His focus was unyielding. _

_He _knew_ what was needed of him._

_Like that, the Speedforce opened its arms to receive him, and he leapt into its ebbing tide without hesitation. In the infinity of that moment between moments, he felt what his younger self had forgotten: the overwhelming _peace_ of that connection. And when he emerged to see his mentor pinned beneath the man who had wronged them both, he came out fist-first, without fear. _

_He saw Thawne's snarling retaliation and stepped out of its way, his vibrating hand coming up to ghost across the passing fist that quickly stopped in its tracks. Thawne attacked him again and again, but each time he stayed just far enough ahead to avoid being hit while siphoning kinetic energy from every blow. Given a moment to breathe, the Flash surged back into the fight, tackling Thawne into a wall where they proceeded to hammer him one after the next. No more running, no room to maneuver. Two conduits of a single arm, a single will, against the most odious of interlopers._

_As the Flash hammered Thawne with a hundred fists to his body, the Revenant backed away and sprinted in an infinite circle, running into the energy he drew out and collecting it until the crackle of electricity reached a fever pitch. Then his hands came back to grasp the crackling tendrils of power with an iron grip and hurled them all at their enemy._

_Thawne was out before he hit the ground._

_The two speedsters stood over his limp form, Barry having the foresight to fit him with a set of speed-dampening cuffs before turning to the boy he had believed dead and uttering a single word._

"_How?"_

_Rev looked at Thawne, then at Barry. "The Speedforce had other ideas."_

_Barry huffed a small laugh, nodding slowly. "You came to learn from me, but…I ended up learning a little something from you."_

"_The kinetic siphon?"_

_He nodded._

_Rev looked down at his hands, smiling. "Yeah…maybe some other day."_

_At which point he promptly passed out._

…

The silence that followed Lucas' story was interrupted only by Alex's long whistle.

"And I thought _I_ had a near-death experience. But you were like, _actually_ dead. And…saved yourself?"

Luke smiled wryly. "Helluva paradox, right?"

"No kidding," Jason muttered. "Though that still doesn't quite explain how you go from hanging out with the Titans to traveling the _Multiverse_. I mean, why?"

He shrugged, again seeming far too nonchalant. "It's not like there was anything wrong with the place. I was content, home." Another shrug. "I got bored. Call it wanderlust. Besides, Earth-T had enough speedsters and _more_ than enough heroes." He frowned. "An ill-fated mission to my original Earth taught me that not all universes are quite so fortunate."

"But it's not like you could patrol the whole Multiverse alone," Cass chimed in.

Luke met her inquisitive gaze with a mischievous twinkle in his gray eyes. "Oh but I can. Well…in a manner of speaking. Tell me, are you familiar with 'time remnants'?"

Caden's eyes widened in alarm. "Only enough to know that they are _extremely_ dangerous to use and heavily frowned upon by the Speedforce."

Alex raised his hand. "Uh, 'scuse me? What's a time remnant?"

Jason turned to him. "It's a temporal duplicate a speedster makes when they go back in time and meet a past version of themselves. But…only if they stay in that time. The presence of two versions of the same person creates a paradox that'll do some nasty things to the timeline if it goes on unchecked." He frowned at Luke. "But you already knew that, so why would you do something so reckless?"

Lucas grinned and laid back on his hands. "Because I found a loophole." His mirth faded quickly. "On one of the Earths I traveled to, I met someone special who I grew to love, but was fated to die. She kept being killed, over and over no matter what I did, no matter how many times I went back to try again. Pretty early on, the Speedforce got pissed at what I was doing, and honestly rightfully so, so it sent the Black Flash to eliminate that version of me. He kept time-jumping trying to outrun it long enough to save her, but eventually found that the common factor between all of her deaths was himself.

"So…he went back to the time and place when I arrived on that Earth and tried to kill me. Almost succeeded, too. But the version of this woman who existed in that timeline already knew who we were and convinced him not to. _I_ hatched a plan to get the Black Flash off our backs and allow my—oh, by this time he was like two _years_ older than me—my remnant to stay with the woman he loved." His dark gray eyebrows knitted. "See, far as I can tell, my existence in the Multiverse is an anomaly. I don't have doppelgangers on other Earths." His head tilted. "Well, except for Earth-X, but…" he grimaced, "we don't like to talk about that one."

"We?" Alex asked.

"Why not?" Cass interrupted.

"Because Earth-X is basically Planet Nazi," Caden supplied grimly. "Everyone you can think of has their morality flipped."

Lucas nodded slowly, a pained smile on his face. "And _my_ doppelganger happened to be the grand inquisitor of the freakin' Gestapo."

A chorus of "oooh" came from all four of the others.

"Yeah, so…I called the rest of my remnants and their teams together and we took him out…along with a good half of the _Reichsliga_."

"The what?" asked Cass.

"It's German for 'Reich League,'" Caden said. "Guessing that's their version of the Justice League."

Lucas nodded grimly.

Alex frowned. "And when you say 'took out'…"

Luke's lips pressed into a thin line as he mimed wringing someone's neck.

"Oh."

He snorted. "Like _you_ would do any different if you found a version of _yourself_ that twisted."

Alex lifted his hands placatingly. "Oh I'm not judging; I'm part Jewish." He shrugged. "Plus I'm…decently sure everyone in this room—with the possible exception of Miss Cain—would agree that Nazis are pretty much the universal exception to the 'heroes don't kill' rule."

No one said anything, but Jason and Drake just shrugged indifferently.

Luke cleared his throat. "As for why I came _here_, well…the tachyon device I have zeroes in on distinct frequencies that correspond to alternate universes, allowing me traverse them at will. But this one…this one had a unique signature I'd never seen before."

"Still," Caden said, "a suit and tie doesn't seem like the most…appropriate thing to wear when crossing dimensions."

Lucas blinked at him, then laughed until he was red in the face. "_Oh_. That. Now _that_ is a funny story."

"Oh boy," Jason muttered.

"Relax, this one's quick. Besides," he waved at Alex's projection, "that scan's still going and it hasn't beeped or anything, right?"

Alex looked over to verify the device was working and checked for results but found nothing. "Yeah, nothing yet."

Luke grinned toothily, chuckling mischievously. "That story I told you just now? That happened like…two years ago. This…this was _today_."

…

_"Hands up, pretty boy!"_

_ Lucas blinked at the guy wearing a ski mask shoving a shotgun in his face. He was wearing headphones at the time, but they weren't playing loud enough to completely drown out what the guy was saying. But _he_ didn't know that. So he pulled out the headphones and blinked at the thug inquisitively._

_ "Sorry, what?" he asked cheekily._

_ "Hands up and on the ground like the rest!"_

_ Luke glanced around at the dozen or so people planted face-first. A sigh exited his throat as he realized he'd been so distracted choosing his next song, he hadn't even noticed he was walking into a crime in progress._

_ "Wait," Luke said, "are you…robbing me?"_

_ "The bank," he clarified. "All your money's insured, so let's not make a mess of this; no heroes."_

_ "But…but you're robbing…_me_?"_

_ The guy stared at him like he was crazy, waving the shotgun at him for emphasis. "_Yes_!"_

_ Lucas sighed and wound up his headphones, pocketing them as he muttered, "And I got all dressed up and everything."_

_ "What?"_

_ "I leave for a couple months, and you all start getting delusions of grandeur."_

_ The gunman and his two comrades stared at Luke like he was crazy._

_ That was, until he met the shotgunner's eyes with his own dancing with lightning._

_ "Oh sh—"_

_ In the next split-second, all three were thrown against different walls hard enough to instantly be knocked out cold. Luke had the first one's shotgun in his left hand while his right vibrated at a destructive frequency and cut through the metal and wood of its barrel like a cleaver. He tossed the remaining chunk to the side as everyone else in the room stared at him, still very much freaked out. He shrugged and nonchalantly waved toward the exit doors of the multi-floor bank._

_ "Please proceed outside in an orderly fashion, if you will." He pointed at one of the tellers. "Except you, dear. Before you go…" he pulled his phone out, "would you mind plugging this into the PA system and uh…hitting play?"_

_ She stared at him agape, blinking rapidly as she hesitantly took the device. "S-Sure."_

_ He grinned blindingly. "Thank you." When everything was set, he started sauntering toward the door that led deeper inside. "And three…two…one…"_

_ The grainy static of the building's PA system rapidly yielded to a jaunty electric ensemble as The Heavy's "How You Like Me Now" played at full blast on every floor. Lucas strutted and snapped his fingers to the beat as he pushed the door open, making his way toward the stairwell that led to the eighth-floor vault. He bounced from one foot to the other, bobbing his head to the rhythm until he turned a corner and entered a hallway with two very-confused bank robbers. They snapped toward him, shouting in alarm as Rev closed the distance to one, pinning him to a wall. He grabbed the man by the neck and spun him toward the other gunman, blocking his shot, then picked him up off the ground and hurled him into his comrade._

_ A charging heel-kick laid them both out, groaning weakly at no-doubt bruised ribs. Then he just kept walking toward the stairwell. Having heard the commotion, three more burst in through a set of double doors ahead and opened fire with pistols. His perception sped up so the bullets were practically crawling as he kept walking forward. He tsked and flicked them out of his path with as little effort as possible, grabbing one and hurling it into the leg of the central gunman. When Rev's timescale returned to normal, the injured attacker screamed and collapsed to one knee, his involuntary flinch causing his gun to go off, the ricochet sending explosions of drywall and shattered tile flying everywhere._

_ The other two ducked down instinctively, leaving them vulnerable to Rev's charge as he palmed them both in the face, sending them skidding down the hall sans weapons. They tried getting up only for each to get a superspeed punch to the face. He was approaching the staircase when the song approached the first chorus, and he grinned as he heard alarmed shouts from above._

_ "We got trouble! Cut him off at the stairs!"_

_ At which point he burst through the doors and sped up the staircase like a tornado, bowling over everything in his path and throwing a fair few over the edge in a fall that would no doubt break some bones. When he reached the end of the spiral, Lucas resumed his walking pace, though a little brisker now. Though not exactly the brightest bunch, this crew was fairly organized, and he had definitely spotted a radio or two among their gear. As such, he expected they'd all have been alerted to his presence by then. Thus, it was hardly a surprise when the hallway began flooding with more armed thugs._

_ He caught one before he could bring his weapon to bear, punching him in the face, then drawing back a step when someone else charged at him with a baton—a freaking _baton_! Grinning incredulously, Luke deliberately slowed his dodges to make the idiot think he stood a chance, then twisted his wrist mid-swing and brought his own baton into his temple. The gunman was KOed a second later, and the baton thrown into another incoming thief of three who burst through double-doors at the far end of the hallway. He dropped like a sack of rocks._

_ Lucas charged at the other two, who sprayed automatic fire at him heedless of their backstop—their two downed comrades. Gritting his teeth, he drew their shots to the other side of the hallway and streaked toward them on the ceiling and walls in a spiral too fast for them to track. That spiral pattern continued with passing strikes that sent them flying into the wall one after the other in a pile. He proceeded through the double-doors at a walk, unconcerned as ever. He had chosen this bank specifically because of its multilayer security, the vault and safe deposit boxes being kept on the eighth floor behind all those layers giving him a certain sense of certainty._

_ Even the best security could only do so much against a small army of thugs with automatic weapons. Thus, he made his way toward the elevator that was the only way up to the eighth floor, into a wide area that looked like a break room. Six more gunmen were waiting for him as he strode through the door, and they opened fire immediately. He rolled his eyes and ducked to the side, running to topple the lot of them in a zigzag pattern that sent the lighter chairs and paper cups flying with the wind running off his form. One groaned at the far end, and Lucas vibrated his right hand until it was crackling with energy, snapping it in his direction to shoot him with the rough equivalent of a taser shot._

_ Then he just kept walking, strutting actually, as the song steadily approached the second chorus._

_ The elevator dinged open right when he reached it, revealing another four startled masks standing inside. _

_Lucas smiled toothily. "Fellas."_

_Then he stepped inside, the chorus popped off, and the elevator became a catastrophe of panicked gunfire, ricochets, and grappling that lasted the whole chorus and most of the way up. When they were all on the ground, Lucas sighed and picked at his nails, straightening out his suit. He heard something over one of their radios, someone shouting orders to cover the door leading to the vault room—the leader, he supposed. If memory served, the vault antechamber was a large, open room with two levels and catwalks above that would serve as great firing positions._

_Not that it mattered, of course._

_As the elevator doors opened, Luke strutted down the hallway, bobbing his head to the bridge of the song still blaring over the loudspeaker._

"Does that make you love me, baby…_"_

_He reached his hand out to the side, eyes slipping shut as he dragged his fingers along the wall._

"Does that make you…want me, baby…_"_

_His lips slowly spread into a malevolent smile as electricity sparked between him and the wall, a rush of potential energy flooding his system with every step as he drew power through the building from the rotation of Earth itself._

"Does that make you love me, baby…_"_

_His open hand curled into a fist._

"Does that make you…want me, baby…_"_

_His eyes snapped open, consumed by the silver lightning he stored within._

_And as the song reached its final crescendo, he burst the antechamber doors off their hinges, sending the two posted closest crashing to the ground under their weight. The entire room was suddenly _engulfed_ with silver lightning, a veritable hurricane that sent panicked gunfire and scattered wind in every direction. Rev counted a dozen gunmen posted all around the room on both floors, not counting the leader holding the bank manager hostage. Every last one of them was hurled into the air within the space of about ten seconds, to the point where Lucas returned to the central aisle, strutting toward the leader without a care in the world._

_All around him, the other bank robbers were flying into furniture or walls, or falling from the catwalks above, and Lucas just kept walking unfazed. Panicking at the chaos, the leader raised his Glock and started shooting at Rev, eyes widening further when the bullets went right through him unimpeded. He kept firing as Lucas drew within ten feet of them and came to a stop._

_The idiot stared at him for a second before lifting the gun as if to throw it._

_Luke snorted a laugh. "Right, 'cause the last two hundred _bullets_ worked just fine."_

_His lips pursed, and then he put the barrel of his gun to the manager's head._

_Rev gave him a deadpan glare. "That wasn't a better move."_

"_Now, you're gonna let me outta here, or—"_

_He never got to finish, since Rev closed the distance faster than he could blink, one hand pulling the barrel of the gun away from the hostage, the other phasing through the manager's chest to palm-heel him across the room. He landed with a wheezing gasp, devoid of the weapon that was now sitting in Luke's left hand. The speedster sighed and gave the manager an exasperated look, like he was saying, "Do you believe this idiot?"_

_She just stared at him wide-eyed and speechless._

_He blinked. "Oh, that reminds me." He tucked the gun in the back of his pants and reached into the inside flap of his jacket. "I have uh…a withdrawal to make, filled out the form and everything."_

_Another long stare. "Are you serious?" she asked, waving at the various unconscious and groaning thugs around them._

_Lucas gave his best winning grin. "Please? I did come in here to do business, and I'd consider it a personal favor. Plus, I _am_ in a bit of a hurry—" he shrugged, "—speedster."_

_The woman still looked like she thought he was nuts, but hesitantly took the slip anyway and marched off toward the vault._

_Which prompted Luke to turn toward the still-gasping orchestrator of this debacle, who he eyed with a cold gaze. His head cocked slightly._

"_Now…what to do with you?" Luke took a step toward him, slowly drawing the Glock from the back of his belt, much to the guy's alarm. "I figure turnabout's fair play."_

_He raised the weapon and pulled the trigger before the thug could even think of pleading for mercy._

Click.

_Lucas couldn't restrain uproarious laughter at the heart attack he could see on this guy's face. "Relax! You, you bloody amateur, were holding down the slide release lever with your thumb." He showed him what he was talking about and chuckled some more. "You never even knew you were out."_

_And he didn't either when Lucas bashed him square in the forehead with the butt of his own gun. Moments later, the manager returned with a small piece of paper._

"_You requested a cashier's check?" she said uncertainly._

_Luke broke out into a grin as he took it from her, slipping it into his jacket. "So I did. Thank you very much. Would you like to go outside now?"_

_She nodded emphatically._

_He smirked. "I hope you haven't just eaten."_

"_Wha—"_

_Moments later, they were outside and she was trying not to retch._

"_Sorry," he chuckled, "but I'd suggest moving across the street with the others. The police should be here any minute now."_

_She stared at him, nodding slowly. "Hey, aren't you—"_

_He was gone before she could finish, vanished into a nearby alleyway as he double-checked the writing on the check. Confirming it was valid, he was about to take off again when he felt and heard something just _appear _behind him. A resigned sigh left his throat a moment later._

"_You just couldn't let this go, could you?" he asked, turning slowly to feel his heart sink at what he saw._

_The first five he'd ever met in this town: Raven, Starfire, Cyborg, Beast Boy, and Nightwing; standing on one of Raven's dark energy platforms as they were slowly lowered to the ground._

_Nightwing stepped forward first. "Don't make this any harder than it has to be."_

"_I'm not coming with you," he said flatly._

_Starfire held her hands out pleadingly. "Rev, please—we can work this out."_

"_There's nothing to work out. I was convicted of a bullshit charge and I refuse to spend the next six months or two years or however long appealing a crime I should never have been tried for in the first place." His eyes narrowed. "I know I should've expected this from Mister By-the-book," he waved at an exasperated Nightwing, "but _you_ surprise me, Raven."_

_The pale woman frowned, BB gently gripping her hand. "I don't think you want to run any more than we want to chase you," she said._

"_You and I both know that we don't always get what we want."_

"_So the alternative is better for you?" Cyborg asked. "Just…live the rest of your life as a criminal?"_

_Lucas smiled nastily. "We're _all_ criminals, Vic. The difference is—"_

"_We have a conscience," Nightwing interrupted, eyes narrowing behind his mask. "And a line we're not willing to cross."_

_Luke held his gaze unflinchingly, lips pursed. "I'm not sorry."_

"_And what about Erica?" Star asked._

_He flinched, turning away from them just enough to put his waistline out of their line of sight. "My _sister_ has spent long enough in someone else's shadow."_

"_You already abandoned her once, dude," Gar said. "I don't think she's gonna like you doing it again."_

_He snorted derisively. "Shows what you know; she was the only one who understood my reason for leaving." He glared. "And for the record, the first time I left her with the wrong people; you and the Titans aren't."_

_Cyborg frowned and took a step forward, his cybernetics whirring as they went active. "We can't just let you walk away."_

_Rev smirked and met their eyes defiantly. "'Let' me?"_

_The next split-second, a charging whine came from Lucas' belt and the tachyon device he'd attached there. He vanished in a storm of lightning an instant before Raven encased his location in a bubble of dark energy._

"…_damn."_

…

Jason eyed the storyteller warily. "Why were the Titans of your Earth so intent on arresting you?"

Lucas flinched visibly. "Someone framed me for murder, then had the audacity to testify against me during the trial. I was convicted, and when I thought he was going to get away with it, I kinda…" he scratched the back of his head, "tried to kill him in a room full of witnesses. Of course, the truth came to light later, but…the court wasn't exactly willing to overlook attempted murder."

Cass' eyes widened. "That's why you weren't wearing a mask during any of that."

He shrugged. "Well, that and keeping a secret identity is a luxury for me, not a necessity. It's more to protect the people close to you, when you think about it, and the Titans aren't exactly shy about broadcasting where they live. You can try going after 'em, but with the tower's defenses alone, you're gonna have one helluva time getting close."

She shrugged. "Fair enough."

"I didn't want my friends to have to choose between me and their duty." He shrugged. "So I left." Lucas turned back to Jason. "I'm a convicted criminal. That going to be an issue?"

Jason frowned. "For what?"

"Us working together."

Three pairs of eyebrows shot skyward—though not Cass', as if she'd been expecting this.

"Working toge—you realize I tried to kill you earlier, right?" Jason asked incredulously.

He shrugged. "Meh, I've had worse first impressions."

Strangely, everyone believed him.

Caden frowned. "Why?"

"Why would I have—oh, you mean…well, it's kinda what I do. Go to a new universe, find a problem to solve." Luke turned back to Jason with a frown. "And this 'Janus' character seems like a pretty big problem if he took out Batman _and_ Wonder Woman."

Jason stared at him for a second. "He is…and much as I hate to admit, I'm not in the position to refuse able help."

Lucas threw up his hands. "I laid all three of you out in less than two minutes."

"True," Alex chimed in, "but by that point, we _all_ knew—" he sent a pointed glare at Jason, "—that you weren't the man we were after. I know at least that _I_ wasn't trying particularly hard. Rest assured…" his eyes narrowed, flaring with blue light, "if you turn on us in any way, I _will_."

The speedster nodded firmly. "Understood."

Just then, a loud beep came from Alex's projection, and everyone whirled toward it as the Lantern checked the readout.

"I've got a hit! It's…wait…that can't be right."

Jason frowned and moved in, eyes widening in alarm. "Karbala…that's—"

"In Qurac," Caden interrupted, "right on the border with Bialya."

"That can't be a coincidence." Jason turned to Alex. "Warp bubble?"

He nodded. "Warp bubble."

Jason turned to his sister, her flat look and crossed arms leaving no question of where she was going. Finally, everyone turned to the Revenant, who had attached a round device to his belt that rapidly deployed a gray-white suit with a hex pattern to its form-fitting material. Segments of it were up-armored with steel-gray insets, especially around the joints and vital organs. On his neck was a high-collared housing unit that he touched a moment later, sending the bulky section in the back flipping over to cover the rest of his head, sans mouth and chin. On his chest was a gray-and-white lightning bolt not dissimilar to that of the Flash, something Jason knew he would ask about later. The uniform was enough indication of his choice, and the two exchanged a nod as Alex led them outside.

The Black Bat, White Revenant, Tomorrow Knight, Blue Lantern, and Caden Drake stood in the dim streetlights as a glowing ball of sapphire energy encased the five of them. Alex exchanged a look with Jason before he looked to the sky and clenched his left fist.

They shot off into the atmosphere a moment later.

* * *

AN: Okaaaaay, so that took way longer to write than I thought it would. Yeesh.

For those of you unfamiliar with Lucas Carlisle, go read my Teen Titans story. It's unfinished, but the first six chapters in particular have a lot of background with how he became a Titan. If he seems OP as crap now, relax. He is. In fact, speedsters in general are OP as crap, and this one in particular…well, he has over half a decade of experience at this point with cataclysmic world-ending events across the Multiverse. But that in no way makes him unstoppable. You'll see what I mean as the story goes on.

Just one more left to introduce now, or rather, bring into the fold. After all, that's five of six symbols on the cover art accounted for. I'll leave you to guess who the last one is.

Let me know what you thought of these origin chapters. I know I'm throwing a lot at you with these last two, and when you introduce speedsters and dimension and time-jumping…well, just let me know if I'm moving too _fast_…bad joke.

Anyway, hope you enjoyed the chapter. Now that introductions are finished, we can get into the meat of this arc and hopefully the rest of the story. It's gonna be a blast.

Drake out.

Musical Inspirations:

The Flash (Season 1) – Catch Me If You Can: STAR Labs break-in/fighting Thawne/time portal/déjà vu

Ruelle – Until We Go Down: start-0:48—Lucas' wandering/hit-and-run, 0:48-1:20—red and yellow/time jump/lightning strikes, 1:20-2:24—rewritten by lightning/the Flash vs. Reverse-Flash/the coin/passed out, 2:24-2:30—the coin falls, 2:30-end—the Revenant arrives/saving himself/embracing the Speedforce/conduits as one/"some other day"

The Heavy – How You Like Me Now: making a withdrawal


	3. The Vagabonds I: Incursion

"You're late."

Kara frowned. "I had to sub in and put Jon to bed. Kal is still away at Altair IV helping T'nalak with the provisional government, and Lois went out with Dinah for some girl time. It was all I could do to get away at all." She nodded at Diana. "I'm surprised you're even _here_, given…you know."

The Amazon frowned, running a hand over her armored midsection. "The bump isn't big enough to slow me down or make him vulnerable yet." Her lips pursed. "I knew I'd be forced out of the field eventually, but…I'm hoping to delay that as much as possible."

Kara bit her lower lip. "Just don't overstress, and if I see you looking off—"

Diana rolled her eyes as she led the younger woman toward the meeting room. "Please, not you too. Bruce is already making preparations to pen me into the manor…and Alfred is helping him."

"And Damian and Cass?"

"They're mercifully ambivalent." She scowled. "Don't even get me _started_ on Jason."

Kara laughed and flicked her hand through her hair. "Well he _should _be a little more invested than the rest, considering who it is you're carrying."

Diana frowned crookedly. "Fair point."

"I'll try to keep my mothering to a minimum." She winked at her.

Diana chuffed and smacked her arm as they made their way into the core members' conference room. Kara raised an eyebrow at the table in the center. Of the nine chairs, only two were occupied. She waved at that absence before taking her seat.

"Just you and Hal today?"

Batman frowned. "Unfortunately, yes. Which is problematic, given this situation."

Kara drew back slightly. "What situation?"

He waved to Green Lantern. "Hal, if you would."

Hal activated the table's holoprojector, lighting up a 3D map of an all-too-familiar geographical region.

"Six hours ago," Batman said, "Watchtower sensors picked up heavy movement toward the northmost Bialyan border with Qurac. We've been tracking their progress and numbers; they've only been increasing by the hour."

Diana crossed her arms. "Can't say I'm surprised. After that stunt at Christmas, it was only a matter of time."

"What concerns us most is the area the Bialyans seem to be advancing on." Batman blew up a hilly region on the northern border of Qurac, where a small city called Karbala sat just below a small mountain range. "Karbala, approximate population of ten thousand. Our contact in ARGUS supplied information from within the Quraci government showing an underground nuclear power plant built into a nearby mountain—against UN mandate, and with output and enrichment far above regulation."

"You think the Bialyans know about it?" Hal asked.

Diana's lips pursed tightly. "I can see several far more advantageous insertion points within twenty miles of Karbala just considering the terrain, places that'll allow their forces a bit more concealment. I can hardly see another reason for them to gravitate toward this place."

"The question is what they plan on doing with that plant," Kara said. "Taking control of it would require strong-arming the existing staff, and I'm not even sure it would be of much use short-term."

Batman's jaw tightened. "That's exactly it; nuclear power is a consolidation tactic once you have an active occupation. Selecting this location for an initial insertion has two likely objectives, and they certainly aren't mutually exclusive: first, to intimidate the populace and spread word of an overwhelming invasion force, and second—"

"Trigger a meltdown," Diana said, horrified.

Kara's eyes shot wide open. "The fallout from a reactor of that size would be…_devastating_. It'd be Chernobyl all over again, _worse_ even."

Batman nodded. "And what better way to break the people's spirit by using their own government's secret installation to wipe out an entire city?"

Kara released a shuddering breath.

"That said, our primary objective is to halt that invasion force by any means necessary, preferably without resorting to violence. Failing that, we stop them from crossing the border and ensure the power plant remains secure. Any questions?"

"Does the Quraci government know we're coming?" Diana asked.

Batman's head shook. "Despite our assistance at Christmas, they've been reluctant to ask for our help."

Hal frowned. "As much as I hate the idea of letting Bialya get away with something like that, do we really want to be seen as foreign interlopers? It could cause more problems than it solves."

Diana nodded slowly. "True, but this feud doesn't just affect those two. If Bialya sets off the equivalent of a dirty bomb, nations across Europe and Asia are going to start moving in on the region to secure their interests. They'll have a lot more 'foreign interlopers' if we _don't_ intervene." She huffed. "Not to mention the thousands of civilian casualties that'll result from their war even _without_ a meltdown."

"Bialya's not exactly known for having the best rules of engagement," Kara agreed grimly.

"Then we're agreed," said Batman. "Prep and meet in the Javelin hangar in thirty. By our projections, they'll still be a good fifteen miles out by the time we reach the border."

"You got it," Hal said.

"Dismissed."

The four dispersed, Kara tapping her gauntlet to see a short text from Jason.

[Going into the field with Cass. I'll be out of contact for a while.]

Kara smiled. He'd been getting better about letting her know since they'd gotten together a little over a month ago now. One of the key benefits of dating someone who knows your secret is not having to lie about where you've been that you haven't been able to respond. Fewer misunderstandings that way. Despite the unsettling trend of in-the-know relationships tanking, Kal's horror stories about his early days with Lois had scared her away from most relationships with civilians. That was one of many reasons she hadn't dated anyone seriously apart from Brainy and Jason, despite being on Earth for more than four years. She'd take the drama of hero work and danger any day over having to lie to her significant other.

Kara absently typed off a similar response and sent it before closing the app and making her way to the Javelin bay. It wasn't like she had any gear to gather; she always carried her arsenal within her. On the way there, above the hum of the Watchtower's reactor, she caught something in her peripheral hearing that she couldn't help listening in on.

"_Are you sure you want to come on this one?"_

"_Bruce, for the last time, I'm _fine_, and so is the baby."_

"_We're repelling a fully armed invasion force with military explosives and likely some alien tech."_

"_We've handled worse."_

"_Not with our son on the line."_

"…"

"_You know what I mean."_

"_Bruce, if I weren't absolutely certain I could defend us both, I would stay out of the field. I'm not _that_ stubborn. Besides, we already agreed on the five-month deadline."_

"_Di, August to April. Eight months."_

"_Your point?"_

"_My point is, he's already going to be a month premature without the added stress of this job. Future son or not, we can't take anything for granted."_

Diana sighed. _"I know, and there's nothing I wouldn't do for our children. You know that. Tell you what…if this gets too hot, and you are absolutely _certain_ that the danger is too great—and trust me, I'll know if you're overblowing it—I'll pull back and support from the rear as best I can."_

"…_figure that's about the best deal I'm gonna get."_

"_Bruce, you are the sweetest, but you really need to stop mothering me—that's _my_ job."_ She chuckled and kissed him with a smack. _"Also, Kara—"_

Supergirl stopped mid-step, eyes wide.

"—_if you let yourself get distracted because of what you just heard, I'm dragging you back to Themyscira by the ear for remedial training…which I will oversee _personally_."_

Kara gulped and quickened her pace toward the hangar.

…

Elsewhere, unbeknownst to them, the Quraci army personnel guarding the entrance of the aforementioned power plant sank to the ground, paler than they'd been a few seconds ago for the massive flow of blood from their carotid arteries. The tungsten flechettes in their throats hummed with magnetism for a moment, then returned to their source, a pair of gauntlets held by a six-foot figure stalking toward a side entrance concealed in an alcove etched into the mountain. That figure was encased from head to toe in black-and-gray ballistic armor with external trauma plates and a full helmet that emitted a near-inaudible hiss with every breath.

His left hand waved toward the door he'd just vacated, prompting movement on either side of him as the hallway beyond was flooded with bodies in desert camouflage. Gunfire and shouting rang out ahead of him as he strode through the gap behind his men, one of them doubling back to fall into step with him.

"Their security is in disarray; Teams Gamma and Theta are reporting minimal resistance at the other entrances."

"Of course," grated the man, his expressionless gray mask showing Greek phrases inscribed into the fringes and a hint of dark eyes behind the slits. "The arrogant never fear being cast from their pedestals."

"Yes, sir."

"Have the other teams located the control room?"

"Not yet, but we _have_ locked down the primary coolant system. Our engineers are getting to work isolating the necessary systems to execute the operation."

"Excellent. As soon as they've figured it out, have them commence immediately."

The other man frowned. "By our estimation, it should take maybe an hour to complete."

"Good."

"Our Bialyan allies will be well within the radius by then."

"Did I stutter, Lieutenant?"

"…no, sir."

The masked man turned to his subordinate at a junction of hallways littered with bodies. "Then I expect you and the rest to get to it."

"Yes, Lord Achilles."

Achilles watched the man beat a hasty retreat, a quiet groan drawing his attention to one of the wounded guards still drawing breath. The man's sun-kissed features twisted in terror as that featureless mask rapidly approached. He went for his sidearm with violently shaking fingers, barely managing to clear the holster halfway before Achilles' left gauntlet flashed with silvery light and the gurgle of blood filled the silent hallway. A sharp twist of his arm brought the 12-inch blade spinning back into the gauntlet as he straightened up.

Without another glance at his most recent victim, Achilles strode deeper into the complex, quietly humming along to the symphony of panicked screams.

…

"I have a question."

Lucas arched a cheeky brow. "Just the one?"

Jason restrained an eye-roll as he glanced at the rapidly-passing planet below. "You said this was a timeline where you could finally be happy about my parents. What did that mean?"

The speedster frowned. "Well, usually those two dance around each other for the better part of half a decade before anything happens, and it's rarely satisfactory. _He's_ usually giving excuse after excuse about wanting to keep her safe from his enemies or himself—or both. She's usually all 'I'm a big girl, I can take care of myself.' And eventually, she gets frustrated enough to decide on dating other people. The more vindictive versions of her do it _intentionally_ to make him jealous—which works, but usually not enough for him to do a thing about it. The rare occasions when he does…well, they usually end up broken up after a few months."

Cass frowned, exchanging a look with Jason. "And how many have you seen defy that trend?"

Lucas leveled him with a pointed look. "…one."

Jason kept staring at him. "The way you said it kinda implied that there was more to it, like there was a version of events that you actively _hated_."

He hummed absently, stroking his chin as he looked up. "Well…" he shrugged, "I guess there was that one timeline where Superman went crazy, murdered the Joker, outed Bruce as Batman, took over the world, and…" his gray eyes focused on Jason's face, "hooked up with your mom."

Immediately, Jason's face contorted into a red-splotched mess of embarrassed disgust. "Blegh! Ugh!" He glared at Lucas. "Thank you _so_ very much for that mental image!"

"_What_?" he asked confusedly. "It's not like they're related."

"They might as well be! I grew up with Uncle Clark teaching me Kryptonian, and in no _reality_ could he and my mom ever…you know…"

"Well, they did." Luke snorted derisively. "Which is probably the _smallest_ of the horrors that happened in that universe."

Given the suddenly awkward air in the glowing warp bubble, nobody asked him to clarify.

Caden turned to Alex to break the silence. "How much further?"

"Coming onto just the right angle for reentry now." He winked at the rest. "Hold onto your butts."

Aaaand they promptly dropped like a rock, causing Jason to bite back a dozen curses in nearly as many languages. Despite her lead stomach, Cass didn't look too far behind—and he could only tell because he grew up seeing her in that suit. Caden was tense, but more resigned than alarmed, probably because he was used to Alex's antics. And Luke…well…

"_Weeeeeeee_!"

Enough said.

By the time Karbala was within sight, no one wanted to stay within that bubble a second longer than necessary. Lucas' exuberant mood faded with one look at the borders of the city.

"That's a lot of soldiers for a small town like this."

Caden glanced his way. "It's a border town; the new government might not be as stable as the last, but they're not idiots. Bialya and Qurac have been flirting with war ever since the regime change. Still, it's a massive improvement over the last tyrant. Trust me, I would know."

Cass sent him an inquisitive look. "And what exactly does that mean?"

He shrugged. "The bastard and his cabinet funded terrorists with the money he extorted from his own people. The lot of them vanishing was probably the best thing to happen to this country in decades."

Jason turned to explain to Lucas. "There was a war with Olympus a while back; pretty much every high-ranking member of the last regime got taken out. Collateral damage."

"_Mhm_," Caden agreed…a little _too_ readily.

Alex gave him the hardest side-eyes. "Caden…they _were_ collateral damage, weren't they?"

"Sure."

The Lantern gaped at him, his tone scandalized. "Caden!"

Drake met his eyes firmly, face blank. "I'm not sorry."

Lucas glanced between them. "What am I missing?"

Alex's lips pursed tightly as he jabbed a thumb at Caden. "This cheeky little bastard used a duel between Shazam and Hecate as a cloak to assassinate the last regent and his cabinet." He semi-glared at Drake. "Or did I completely misread that?"

"I'm still not sorry. They were kidnapping _children_ as soldiers for their BS racial cleansing wars, for frack's sake."

"But killing a head of state—"

"Is just part of the service." Caden's arms crossed as he glowered at the darkened city. "Hanukah came early that year."

The bubble was silent for a good minute or so before Alex sighed and said, "We're coming up on the portal coordinates now. The signature's a few minutes old, though, so it might take a bit of looking before we get anywhere."

As soon as their feet touched the gravel of a rooftop, Rev stretched out as best he could.

"Don't worry," said the speedster, "I'll have this place searched top-to-bottom in no time."

"No."

He turned to a frowning Jason.

"We stick together, or at least in small groups. We'll need strength in numbers to survive more than a few seconds if Janus is feeling motivated. Use that time to call the rest of us if you spot him—or he spots you. Then focus on staying alive until we get there."

"Well, in that case…dibs on Black Bat!"

Cass and Jason blinked in tandem, exchanging another look before the former shrugged.

"I'll go with you," Jason said.

"Then I guess Caden and I are the secondary," said Alex. "Keep your eyes peeled, everyone. And try to stay out of sight. It's pre-dawn, but I don't imagine these people will be too happy if they find whimsically-dressed foreigners skulking about."

"Whimsical?" Lucas asked incredulously.

Alex winked.

"Ignore him," Caden drawled, annoyed. "Stay on comms."

Jason nodded and tapped Cass' arm. "Let's move."

In a semi-fluid motion, the five separated into two groups and moved in a pincer formation around the approximate location of the last energy signature. Though he knew letting his mind wander was a serious liability, Jason couldn't help thinking back to what Caden had admitted to right before their arrival. The conversation was a stark reminder of why the operative had rejected the Justice League's offer. Not that Jason was a saint by any means—he fully intended to put Janus down once they found him—but outside of his Green Arrow persona, Caden seemed almost casual about the concept of taking a life. Though under the circumstances, he couldn't really blame the man's utter lack of remorse.

The oldest Drake had a checkered past, to say the very least, but the one thing that had remained fairly constant was his lone wolf status. He rarely had a partner for more than a few days and the few times he'd tried being part of a team, things had gone pear-shaped pretty fast. Caden just didn't seem to fit with the people he liked for anything more than a visit. He was too strong-willed, too independent, opinionated to the point of insanity, and—as they had just seen—flaunted any sense of rules or decorum that got in the way of his ideals. How a man like that could be such close friends with someone like Alex—who was basically the embodiment of rules and decorum—went against every sense of logic Jason could drum up.

Yet in spite of the scandalized tone Alex had adopted when Caden revealed his little…side operation during the Olympus War, Jason had never detected a hint of judgment. He was sure Alex didn't approve of his methods, but the Lantern wasn't about to turn it into a fight over a difference in ideology that they would never agree on. It was the exact same way Bruce treated him. Jason's mind suddenly wandered to his namesake, to the outcast of the family, and he wondered—not for the first time—if that was a bridge that could be mended in this time. His history said no.

_His _history could crawl up its own ass and die.

Shoving that thought away for later, the Knight returned his focus to the mission at hand, scanning the near-blackout streets from where he hovered above while his peripheral vision kept track of Black Bat's barely-visible form as she traversed the rooftops. Despite his boisterous nature, the Revenant was as silent as both of them, the only hint of his motion a faint flicker of silver lightning that could easily be mistaken for a trick of the mind, especially at a distance. Training with Deathstroke and Nightwing could do that, he supposed. Speaking of which, that was one hell of a resume he brought to the table—if he was telling the truth.

Considering the ease with which he dispatched Alex, Caden, and himself; he was inclined to think so.

TK sent a sonar pulse over the area, lighting up no less than fifty bodies in a one-block radius. All looked to be sleeping—except _that_ one. He tapped his gauntlet to activate his comm.

"Black Bat, you see that straggler off to the east?"

"I see him. Looks armed. Could be a soldier."

"Right."

"I'm gonna take a closer look to confirm," Rev said.

A faint flash of silver lightning preceded another burst of static in Jason's ear.

"Uh, so unless the Quraci military adopted balaclavas and a triangular-partitioned circle-within-crescent ID patch on their arm as the standard uniform, I don't think these guys are locals."

Jason's blood ran cold. "Wait, guys?"

"Yeah, within this warehouse thing over here. He's moving in to meet with more now."

"Hold position," Alex said. "We're on our way."

"Negative, Blue," Jason replied. "Janus is our priority, and this could be a false alarm."

"What do your instincts tell you?" Caden asked.

Jason's silence was answer enough.

"Wait for backup."

He gave a grunt of acknowledgment and flew over toward Rev's location with barely a whisper of displaced air as he touched down on a rooftop overlooking the warehouse. Lucas was at his side a moment later, along with Cass not long after.

"Are they saying anything?" Rev asked.

TK frowned and pulled a laser mic from his belt. "Patching you in."

A moment later, the audio resolved into a frenzied mix of Latin American languages, Spanish predominant, though some Portuguese was mixed in as well. Jason did his best to focus on the loudest cluster, since sorting through all of it was proving harrying.

Suddenly, Rev pointed toward the northeast corner of the building. "Over there. That one sounds like he's in charge."

Knight arched an eyebrow at him. "How can you tell in that mess?"

"Enhanced time perception, plus I know what authority sounds like."

Jason adjusted the mic accordingly, picking up someone talking on a phone in Caribbean-accented English.

_"Forward position secure. Moving on the base in twenty."_

From the other end of the call, he could just make out a gravelly voice through the receiver. _"Making good time then. Excellent. We meet at the prescribed point at 0530. Assuming _el brujo_ follows through with his end, this should be over in no time."_

Cass glanced at Jason. "_El brujo_?"

"Spanish for 'sorcerer,' or 'warlock.'"

Rev nodded to him. "Ten to one odds that's your Janus."

Jason nodded grimly, listening back in.

_"Scrub the location before you leave, and if you run across any late-night stragglers or soldiers, remember: no witnesses."_

_ "_Claro que sí_, _capitán_."_

Cass frowned deeply. "I _know_ the voice on the other end…but I can't quite…" Her head shook uncertainly.

"Send me the recording," Caden said. "I'm great with voices. Also, we're approaching the east end of the warehouse. Gonna move in as soon as we're in position."

"Correction," Alex interrupted, "_you're_ approaching the warehouse. I've been here for the last two minutes."

"And I said that carrying me in a giant glowing bubble would attract too much attention for five in the morning."

Rev snorted a laugh, turning off his comm. and turning to Jason. "Those two are best friends, aren't they?"

TK grinned and shook his head slowly. "Sure sounds like it."

Luke kept chuckling, stopping short when the laser mic picked up movement from the officer toward his men.

Jason listened for a moment. "They're getting ready to move out, Drake. You in position?"

A moment or two of silence passed before he got a reply, in a tone that was none too happy. "We're ready, but I think I know who was on the other end of that call."

"Well don't keep us in suspense."

"When was the last time you heard Santa Priscan Spanish?"

TK's eyes widened as his blood ran cold. "You've gotta be kidding me."

Black Bat practically growled, "It wouldn't be the first time Bane has been hired by the Bialyan government."

"Then let's wrap things up here and _find _him. If anyone knows Janus' part in all this, it's him."

"Agreed," said Alex. "We're ready to move in when you are."

"Roger. Standby."

TK motioned to Black Bat, who fired her grapnel and reeled herself toward the building to rappel on its side wall.

"Rev," he said, "move to the rooftop entrance. You hit high, I'll kick down the front door, and Black will handle any runners."

"Caden and I will do the same from the opposite end," Alex chimed in. "I'll take the back door, you on the roof."

"Copy," he said.

Jason scanned the building and saw a cluster of no less than a dozen heavily armed gunmen beyond the heavy front doors where he was set up.

"Ready?" Alex asked.

He received a chorus of affirmatives.

"Breach, breach, breach!"

The Knight snapped both legs outward, flying toward the reinforced double doors fists-first. The deafening screech of shearing metal startled the squad of masked gunmen inside, all of whom instantly snapped ironsights toward him. He reached down in the next split-second, before any of them could get a sight picture on him, and flung one of the caved-in doors at a tight cluster of them. Two dove just out of its reach, but the other three were pinned under the heavy metal. Gunfire broke out before the dust had settled, a hailstorm of automatic fire shattering against his bracers as he mapped out his next move.

With a little over a week of having his powers back, Jason hadn't had a lot of recent practice with bullet deflections. It was certainly heartening to see that he hadn't slipped in his underpowered state. More, it was almost as if he could see them coming before they even left the barrel. With that advantage, he mapped out a plan of attack within the first two seconds, having long since lost count of the number of rounds he'd shattered so far. The other door was kicked upright and held like a riot shield as he closed in on a cluster of gunmen. The heavy metal door wasn't meant to withstand that kind of sustained fire, and quite a few rounds went through, but at significantly reduced speed that maximized the effectiveness of Jason's body armor. As a result, they failed to do any more than scuff his armor as he physically wrapped the door around four of them, pinning them to the ground.

One with a shotgun targeted him at point-blank range, and he lunged sideways a split-second before it went off, buckshot shredding the wall behind him. Screams echoed from the other end of the warehouse along with more gunfire as he grabbed the shotgun's barrel and squeezed it until it was useless. The ruined weapon bludgeoned its owner, then was flung into another, one of the two who avoided his first attack. He leapt for one of the last three, a batarang shearing through the barrel of his gun as TK twirled and backhanded him. That batarang was thrown into the lower leg of one of the remaining two, and as he screamed, his partner drew his sidearm and opened up on Jason.

He didn't even bother deflecting it, just snapped his head away from the first two shots and snatched the third from the air with one hand while the other palmed his opponent's face and rammed him skull-first into the ground. He punched the screamer unconscious, then carefully broke off the exposed part of the batarang to prevent it from jostling around too much. It was gonna hurt like a bitch when he woke up, but he wouldn't bleed out.

"Front is clear," he said. "How's the rest?"

Caden grunted over comms. "Slight problem. This isn't just a warehouse. There's a tunnel underneath here; they must've been digging for weeks, maybe _months_."

"Then I guess we know how they got into the city," said Alex. "And there's more coming. Once we've cleared this place out, I'm gonna drive 'em back and seal it up on this side. They can't unseal it in time to roll in reinforcements."

Knight flew through the hallways (well, metaphorically speaking; he was running at superspeed), but moments later his speed was put to shame by a white blur that barreled around the corner and bowled over a trio of Bane's mercs pinning Caden down. A thin cable shot out from the rafters to nail another gunman in the leg, tilting him upside-down as Black Bat used him as a counterweight to descend feet-first on his partner. TK lunged and kicked the crate those two were using for cover, sending it flying into another one who screamed as his leg was crushed. Rev zipped over to knock him out before flashing away to continue his sweep elsewhere.

Up ahead, Caden fired a burst of automatic fire into a hole (presumably the tunnel entrance) using one of their appropriated weapons. Then he pulled something off his belt and waited until Alex flew out of the hole, firing ring blasts with corresponding shouts of alarm. Those shouts turned into panicked screams when Caden dropped a live grenade down the hole and closed the hatch. A muffled _thump_ sounded roughly three seconds later, followed by the rattle of shrapnel and dust. Drake held the hatch closed for a while, waiting for the sounds of more movement before opening the hatch again and scanning with his rifle. A shot rang out and he flinched just slightly before emptying the rest of his magazine into the tunnel.

Scowling, Caden tossed the spent gun down the hatch and shut it again, reaching inside his jacket to tug at something. Jason blinked when he tossed a crumpled bullet across the room. If he looked particularly close, he could see Caden breathing with a slight hitch.

"There's a slight problem with your means of subduing these people," Alex scolded.

Drake glared. "Bite me."

Rev stepped out, dusting off his hands. "He means we need someone to interrogate."

"Seriously? Just who the hell do you think I am?" He kicked one of the immobile bodies, causing a groan. "Oi! ¡_Levántate, pendejo_!"

Blinking and cringing, the man looked up at them, eyes darting from face to face. "You're not Quraci," he said in Caribbean-accented English.

Jason recognized his voice as the officer and turned to Caden. "How'd you know?"

Caden grinned ferally. "I have _really_ good ears, even in the middle of a gunfight." His eyes returned to the officer. "Bane. Where were you meeting? And make it snappy."

The officer glanced between their motley uniforms uncomprehendingly before throwing his hands up. "_Qué mierda_—I'm not paid enough for this. There's an abandoned mosque some four blocks southeast of here."

Alex checked his map of the area via ring, frowning. "That's a stone's throw away from the city barracks."

"They're gonna try and cripple the Quraci military," Cass posited.

"That'd be my guess," he replied with a shrug.

"So Janus _is_ working with the Bialyans," Jason mused, frowning. "Why? What could he have to gain?"

"All excellent questions," Caden conceded, "but I don't think this guy has the answers we're looking for. Thus—"

He struck the man in the head with the sole of his boot, hard enough to open up a nasty-looking gash. Jason winced at the sight.

_At least he isn't wearing cleats._

Drake turned southeast and strode toward the nearest exit, the rest following suit.

"So what's the plan?" Luke asked. "Storm the mosque and take out Bane and his crew?"

"Were it so easy," Cass said, voice low. "Bane is a genius tactician nearly on par with my adoptive father. Whatever his mission here, I doubt he's the only moving piece. If it becomes clear that his troops are outmatched, he may decide to call in the rest of the attack early."

Alex arched an eyebrow at her. "So we're agreed that this is part of a larger invasion."

The other four gave various noises of assent.

"Then we need to take down these mercs _quietly_, or at least in a way they can't communicate back to the Bialyans."

"Caden, Cass, and I are best suited for that," Jason proposed, pointing between Rev and Blue. "You two are a bit too high-profile."

Rev snorted. "Oh really, Mr. Punch-You-Into-a-Dumpster?"

Jason deadpanned. "I said I was sorry."

"Actually…no, I don't think you did."

TK's eyes rolled.

"He's right," Alex said, cutting them off as they got outside. "You might be able to clear out most of the riffraff before they even know you're there," he waved to Rev, "but all it takes is one overlooked sat-phone or radio and this city is going to be a lot less populated."

"You really think the Bialyans would go to that extent for a small city like this?" TK asked.

Caden frowned. "If they want a speedy, easy end to this war, their first incursion needs to be about instilling terror. Shock and awe. Given the tyrannical, genocidal tendencies of their queen, if they don't line civilians up in the streets and mow them down with machine guns on live TV, I would be very surprised."

Jason's stomach turned without his consent at the mental picture.

Drake met his gaze. "If I had to wage a total war like this, it's what I would do."

The temperature instantly dropped a dozen degrees, and Jason knew it had nothing to do with the pre-dawn air. As they moved on, he couldn't shake the sight of that look in Caden's eye, certain he'd seen it before.

_Red. Jay looked like that sometimes._

Gulping hard, he took to the skies, eyes peeled for hidden snipers, and firmly reminded himself that Caden was on _their_ side. Like any of the League's Trinity, heaven help them if he ever switched. For most of those present, four blocks wasn't a lot of distance, so they soon found themselves overlooking the mosque in question. A sonar scan of the building revealed about as many troops inside as in the warehouse, with the addition of one who stood at least a head taller than all the rest. What the sonar didn't pick up was the beautifully inscribed reliefs and frescoes all over its walls and doorways.

"If possible," said Jason, "I'd really like to not wreck this place."

"Do this quietly," Caden replied, "and we won't have to."

"I'll go top-down."

"Cass and I will work our way up, then. Good hunting."

Jason nodded and flew toward the minaret at the top, using that entrance to begin his incursion. He ran across two armed sentries almost immediately. Their shock at someone entering from above made them freeze up a split-second too long, as he closed the distance in half that time. They slumped to the ground a moment later, and Jason was already making his way further down.

"Atrium clear," came Cass's voice over comms.

"Making our way into the main hall," Caden added.

Jason clicked his comm. to indicate acknowledgement, since speaking would alert the four mercs huddled right around the corner. One was priming a Stinger missile, no doubt to eliminate any birds the Quracis might launch in response to their impending attack. Suddenly, they all froze in place, one hand drifting to their earpieces. TK couldn't tell their expressions given the balaclavas, but the tension in their bodies was clear enough. Very quickly, all four of them gathered their gear and moved downstairs, though one of them briefly stopped and knelt by the doorway to the stairwell.

Frowning, Jason followed cautiously, peering into the stairway and scooting forward just a tad too much.

_Click_.

He looked down, eyes widening to max when he found the source: an M18 Claymore mine…that he had just activated.

"Crap."

Fortunately, his shield expanded fast enough to stop the seven hundred steel ball bearings that shot toward him. Unfortunately, it didn't stop them from ricocheting and shredding a good portion of the walls around him—or making noise enough to wake the dead.

"They know we're here!" Jason shouted over comms., his ears ringing.

"With a boom like that, I bet they do!" Caden scolded.

"No, they knew_ before_. That mine wasn't there earlier."

Drake cursed under his breath.

Cass chimed in. "Bane must've had the other team on rotating check-in and when they didn't…"

"Yeah," Caden said, "that'd be my guess. Welp, guess subtlety is out the window. Weapons free, people."

As soon as the Knight made it to the landing at the bottom of the stairs, he could see the main hall clearly, bustling with movement like a hive of black bees—appropriate, given who they were working for. Excited shouts came from the bulk of the mercs a split-second before silver lightning struck and four of them flew in opposite directions. Gunfire broke out a second later, peppering the walls and degraded furniture with holes. Jason winced and shook his head, leaping over the bannister to land on a light machine gunner with an elbow drop that shattered his gun. A shin-kick sent him back-first into a wall, and a pair of marksman rounds streaked toward him from an alcove at the very top of the hall.

His bracers shattered the incoming bullets, the laser sight easily traced back the source. His grapnel snagged the man's gun, the electromagnetic reel yanking him screaming into a sixty-foot drop. He met the man halfway and pummeled his head into the wall, then dropped him the rest of the way into a trio of his comrades. Rev finished them off with blows faster than he could track. For all their relative ease in dispatching with this crew, TK couldn't shake the feeling that something was off. A sonar pulse revealed the issue: the head-taller figure was making a break for it out of a second-story window. Snarling, Jason leapt toward him and flew out the window into the adjacent building he'd landed in.

Ordinarily, he would've seen this coming, but by some stroke of _incredibly_ bad luck, it happened between sonar pulses. Thus, the Knight didn't see the lead pipe until it slammed the back of his head so hard he saw stars. Then his face was in the floor—literally; he'd been pushed face-first into the baseboards. His elbow went back, slamming his attacker's forearm hard enough to break his grip. When Jason whirled around, the look of surprise on Bane's face was clearly seen even through the shadows and limited exposure of his luchador mask. It was all in the eyes, which were just visible behind red-tinted lenses.

He planted both feet in Bane's gut before the massive man could adjust, rocketing him through a moldy wall. A Bane-shaped hole was left behind as Jason nipped up to his feet and gave chase, head on a swivel this time. Bane likewise clambered to his feet and snarled, pounding his fist into his palm.

"Did I come so close to breaking the Bat that he sends his _children_ to fight me? I would be insulted if that did not reflect the damage I caused."

Jason smiled nastily, pacing around him. "Oh, he doesn't even know I'm here, and if he did, _he_ broke _you_ so badly that you're no longer worth his time."

Bane chuckled darkly, cracking his neck as one hand drifted to the Venom injector on his arm. "Then it will be quite the surprise when I send him your mutilated corpse."

Sickly green liquid flowed through the tubes decorating his arms and neck, these as flush to his body as possible to avoid any added risk of disconnection. At once, Bane's form began to inflate—but only slightly compared to some of his other forms. He gained maybe six inches of height, and the added definition of his body was clearly seen through the fabric of his stealth uniform, but otherwise retained its shape. Jason frowned. This wasn't the grotesque form of the simulations he'd trained against. He could use _that_ Bane's size against him, easily, but this one…

The advantages of Bane's new Venom tweaks were immediately apparent, since he moved with almost twice the speed of any other iteration Jason had seen. He crossed the distance between them almost before TK could respond, stopping Bane's grabbing hands just before he could get leverage and kneeing him in the chest hard. It didn't even slow him down. Bane kneed him right back—and he _felt_ it. A spinning backhand laid Jason out on the ground, and a kick to his ribs sent him crashing through the same wall he'd thrown Bane through.

"The hell—"

Jason's exclamation was cut off when Bane grabbed him by the back of the neck and laid into his ribs with the other hand. Snarling, TK brought his knee up into an incoming fist, then snapped that leg out to catch Bane in the face with his boot. The other leg came up and push-kicked him in the chest, managing to break his grip on Jason's neck. Bane charged at him once more, the Knight twist-flipping over and catching him by the head to slam it into the ground. Jason twisted his body around to straddle Bane's chest, laying into his face with both fists. Bane brought both arms up to guard, smacking his blows away a few seconds in and grabbing TK by the neck.

The headbutt that followed _should've_ made Bane at least flinch, but Jason couldn't tell one way or the other through the shaky haze as he staggered off. Bane tripped him with a sweeping kick, then grabbed him by the neck and steadily pushed him further and further down into the cracked baseboards. Panic seized Jason as he felt the life steadily throttled out of him. He elbowed Bane's forearms, punched at his joints—nothing worked. Black spots steadily overwhelmed his vision as he pulled at Bane's thumbs in a last-ditch effort to get a gulp of air. His fingers went numb and body went limp, and then he heard automatic gunfire and suddenly he could breathe.

Jason coughed and wheezed as he was distantly aware of a charging form toting a rifle rapidly emptying its contents in Bane's direction. Either Bane was wearing some suped-up body armor or his formula had done something inhuman to his skin density—or both—because he didn't even flinch as Caden pounded him. And these were the devastating 7.62 rounds of the AK-47. The gun itself was tossed at Bane as soon as it was empty. He caught and snapped it in half with his bare hands, which almost made Caden break stride in shock. Almost.

Instead, he drop-kicked Bane in the face, using the recoil of that impact to backflip onto his feet and draw two knives from the back of his belt. TK clambered to his feet and put a hand to his aching throat, coughing a few more times as Bane rapidly closed the distance to Caden. Drake backpedaled, twirling from one movement into the next until his knives became silvery spirals in the darkness, each strike just missing Bane as he weaved around them. Caden lashed out with a kick, following with a stab. Bane caught the former and snatched the knife by the blade, finally drawing blood though it didn't faze him at all.

Drake's eyes widened for a split-second before he grinned and whipped his knife through a trio of Venom tubes on the arm that had grabbed his leg. Jason's eyes widened.

_He _planned_ to be caught. Gutsy…risky too, with Bane in this state._

That was proven especially true when Bane grabbed him by the scruff of his jacket and hurled him toward a cluster of exposed piping. The Knight leapt into the air and caught him before he hit, slowly letting him down.

"You all right, kid?" Drake asked.

"Should be asking_ you_ that," Jason huffed.

Caden snorted and twirled his knives. "I'm not the one who was getting choked out a second ago."

TK returned his attention to Bane, who was eyeing them curiously while tweaking something with his injector. "This new formula is something else. It's like he doesn't feel pain at all, and he's a match for my strength."

Caden arched an eyebrow at him. "You went mano-a-mano with a _god_."

He scowled. "Yeah, that's what worries me."

Drake's eyes narrowed. "We'll figure _that_ out later. For now, let's flank him."

TK smiled malevolently and ran around Bane's left side while Caden made for his right. Bane didn't wait for them, charging straight for Caden. Jason intercepted him from the side, his flying kick caught and used to throw him past. TK whirled midair, using the wall on Bane's other side as a springboard to launch into another kick, this one a flying roundhouse. Bane ducked underneath and charged shoulder-first at Caden. Drake fell to the ground, just barely sliding between Bane's legs and whipping around in a crouch. He threw both knives at Bane's head, severing the last of his tubes, then stared uncomprehendingly when nothing changed. Bane didn't stop, didn't flinch, didn't diminish or slow in any way.

He just turned around and kept charging at them.

Caden's eyes widened sharply. "Oh sh—"

Was all he managed to get out before Bane's shoulder slammed into his chest and sent him flying out the window. Jason was about to leap after him when a flash of blue light from outside stopped him short. Smiling slightly, he returned his attention to Bane, who was laughing softly and shrugging.

"Surprise, _niño_."

Bane offered no more words, just a series of rapid-fire punches TK found himself struggling to block. He dodged under one of them and countered with an uppercut to the ribs, following with a shin-kick to the side of his knee. For the first time in their fight, Bane flinched, prompting the Knight to press his attack and lay it on with a half-dozen rapid-fire punches to the face as he floated midair. Bane tried to grab his legs, but Jason drifted up slightly and kneed him in the face, then wrapped both legs around his head and twirled his body to throw Bane across the room. His grapnel left his belt, firing at the far wall behind Bane and snagging a heavy-looking radiator.

A hard yank ripped it from its mountings and slammed it into Bane's back. He snarled and grabbed the device, using the still-attached cable to pull TK closer, then smack him in the head with the radiator. Jason's helmet went flying off somewhere, but he paid it no mind, snarling as he landed in a three-point crouch. He used that coiled position to springboard into a flying cross to the same spot as his uppercut, continuing to hammer on that point repeatedly. Bane kneed him in the face, now devoid of his helmet, and he could feel his nose on the edge of breaking. The Knight growled and leapt upward, grabbing Bane's head and headbutting him heedless of the resulting pain.

A tornado kick to the same knee as before actually pulled a hiss of pain from Bane, and he kept that twirling motion going with a kick to the ribs. He kept pummeling those two points until Bane lashed out with his other leg in a push-kick that caught TK in the chest. The Knight didn't move, standing there with a vicious look in his eye. Bane froze for just the briefest moment, and then Jason had a hand around his throat and was dragging him through the building, one room after the next. Things became a bit of a blur after that, until Jason was only distantly aware of the shocks of impact and an ever-intensifying scream splitting the air.

It took him almost a minute to realize he was the one screaming—or that he now had his hands around Bane's neck, their positions reversed.

That didn't make him stop.

He kept squeezing harder and harder, throttling him steadily until his eyes rolled back. Then he kept going.

"Jason! _Jason_!"

The approaching voice didn't quite register until Cass was right on top of him, yanking on his arms.

"Jason, enough! Stop!"

He blinked once, twice, slowly turning to see Black Bat staring at him behind her faceless mask. Then he looked back down at Bane's near-lifeless form and remembered where he was. His hands went limp a moment later, and he staggered back, eyes wide in shock. And that was _before_ he saw his surroundings. What had once been a dilapidated building was now a thoroughly _wrecked_ building. Holes in the floor and walls, torn insulation everywhere, piping ripped from its mountings. If the supporting columns hadn't remained untouched, Jason would have been very surprised that the building was even standing.

_Holy crap…_I_ did this? When did I do this?_

It was like the duel with Philippus, but worse. He hadn't even been _aware_…

"Jason," Cass said softly, hand on his shoulder.

He blinked and turned toward her. "I'm okay, I…I don't know what came over me."

She eyed him carefully as the room steadily began filling with the others. "Okay. Just take a breath. And a step back," she added with a slight edge to her voice.

Still disoriented, Jason nodded and did as she said.

Caden strode up to Bane's unconscious form and stared at him for a long moment. "Damn. And I thought getting dragged behind the Batmobile did a number on him." He turned to Jason. "What _are_ you, kid?"

"Hey, ease up," Cass chided. She turned back to Jason. "You okay?"

He took another deep breath and nodded slowly. "Yeah. Yeah, just needed a second."

Cass knelt at Bane's side, slapping a pair of WayneTech shock cuffs on him before snapping open a packet of ammonium salts to wake him up. The juiced-up brawler jolted awake, eyes casting about until they landed on Jason, giving the rest a cursory glance.

"So…" Bane's eyes narrowed, "Wayne and the _ahijada_ created a monster."

Jason flinched.

"I underestimated you, _chico_. Not a mistake I'll be repeating."

"No, thanks to the maximum security cell you'll be getting at Belle Reve," Alex said.

Bane chuckled. "As if any of us will survive that long."

Caden frowned. "What does that mean?"

He shrugged. "No point holding back now, I suppose. _Los tontos_ who hired me, the Bialyans, aim to destroy this city. We were meant to eliminate the military presence to make their incursion easy, but barring that, they will soon turn their guns to the city itself."

"Meaning—"

"Artillery, tanks, rockets—they will level the full might of the approaching force against Karbala." He smiled grimly. "And it _will_ fall when they are finished. No more than dust and echoes."

Lucas glanced to the east nervously. "When?"

"We were meant to move ten minutes ago, so…any second now."

They all pulled back, Bane in no position to go anywhere.

Alex turned to Luke. "How fast can you evacuate the civilians?"

Rev's gray eyebrows shot skyward. "From a city of ten thousand? I'm fast, but I'm not the Flash."

"Get on it for the east-most section of Karbala, at least."

"Closest to the incursion point, got it." He was gone an instant later.

TK moved with Alex as they exited the building. "I can fly over, aim for their strongest guns, see if I can mitigate the damage."

Caden's head shook. "If Bane's right about the size of their force, they'll have enough guns trained skyward to shred the crap out of you before you do any real damage."

"Well what else are we supposed to do?"

Alex's soft voice instantly stopped their bickering. "Just stay behind me."

So they moved east, with Blue Lantern at the lead.

…

The Karbala barracks picked up the aircraft first, on long-range radar. They weren't even trying to hide their approach. Not that it helped the Quracis much. As soon as the guards in the towers looked out to the east, their hearts dropped into their feet. All across the horizon, as far as the eye could see, tanks, helicopters, and mobile artillery peppered the desolate hills to the east, illuminated by the break of dawn. Escorting them were what had to be hundreds, if not thousands of infantry, all armed to the teeth. They halted at the edge of the tallest hill overlooking Karbala, their guns trained on the city, and foremost on the barracks. Orders were screamed into radios and troops were scrambled to every city entrance, but the guards in the towers knew it was too little too late.

A flash engulfed the horizon as a volley of destruction erupted from the Bialyan lines.

Shells and rockets streaked death toward Karbala, the sun nearly blotted out by the smoke of their volley. All who saw it braced for the end.

A wave of near-blinding explosions erupted when every last one of them burst—half a mile from their target.

Eyes turned back toward the city as an azure light to rival the sun emerged from its gates. The source strode toward the encroaching force with calm steps, a stern expression of focus etched into his features. He got twenty feet outside the city when the second volley came. His left arm rose, flaring up as a thousand streaks of light lanced toward the incoming missiles. Another series of deafening explosions split the morning air, even further away this time. The third volley erupted even faster as they opened up at the maximum rate of fire. He broke into a run as his shoulders and arms sprouted surface-to-air launchers made of hardlight, letting off an endless cascade of missiles that struck the incoming explosive rounds.

His eyes darted back and forth, his ring casting a HUD over his eyes as a mere touch of his vision tagged each incoming round before immediately sending a missile to hit it. His feet left the ground as he flew toward the Bialyan battle lines, conjuring new launchers and shooting even faster in his attempts to keep up with the incoming fire. One managed to get through and nearly hit him, the backwash of the explosion forcing him back to the ground. He rolled with the impact and rose to his feet, thrusting his ring out as all finesse was abandoned and a massive shield of azure light obscured the entire eastward side of Karbala. The air on the other side of that shield was a never-dissipating cloud of smoke and fire, the endless explosions pounding his projection and rapidly whittling away his focus.

Alex's teeth gritted as his head throbbed with the pain of holding back so much destruction. His legs buckled, and he fell to his knees, only his ring-arm managing to stay up. Alex hissed and gasped for breath, his other hand braced against his wrist as he began to crumble under the strain. His eyes darted behind him, to the soldiers and civilians Rev had yet to evacuate, to the trio of heroes he'd asked for trust—and had given it. He had not come this far to give up now. The revolutionaries who had taken this country back from their tyrant rulers, the soldiers who now stood to give their lives to defend it, even Caden's actions to set the stage—they all acted on the hope that Qurac and its people could be free of the shackles of bondage.

Every gun in the _world_ could never compare to the power of that hope.

And neither would this armada.

So there he stood, the Blue Lantern of Earth, rising to his feet as the living embodiment of that hope, and with a cry of triumph thrust his ring forth. His hope was the barrier between life and death, literally pushing it back with every passing second. For all that, the headache still hadn't gone away, and he had no idea if he could keep this up until they ran out of ammo.

But he was sure as hell going to try.

The next volley began with a bunker buster missile fired from one of the helicopters, Alex groaning at its approach.

Until it exploded some ways away from his shield.

The next volley fell to a wide beam of crimson energy that swept across the battlefield like a cleansing lance. A red-gold blur descended from the air and crashed boots-first into the rearmost artillery piece, shattering it with a furious cry that sent the crew and surrounding infantry screaming in terror. A torrent of micro-missiles streaked toward the front line of tanks and artillery, shattering their guidance and aiming systems as a Javelin fighter streaked overhead. And Alex felt the strain of holding back enough firepower to level the city a dozen times over lift when a green barrier was superimposed over his own.

"Hey there, Blue."

Alex's eyes snapped over to the form floating some twenty feet above him.

Hal Jordan grinned down at him, his entire body flaring with green energy. "Thanks for the power boost."

Alex grinned back, all teeth, and reinforced his barrier as the three behind him—four once a silver streak joined them—surged into the fray.

…

"You're supposed to be at home!"

"And _you're_ supposed to be on bedrest!" Jason countered at his mother's assessment of both him and Cass.

She sent him a deadpan glare, twirling a shield from her back and blocking a hailstorm of incoming fire. "Well, as long as you're here…"

The Tomorrow Knight grinned. "Shall we?"

Wonder Woman smiled back and nodded as they both drew sword and shield and charged forth into the enemy's lines. Between the smoke and demolished tanks, Black Bat and Caden had plenty of cover and concealment as they followed in the wake of the two metas, mopping up the dregs. And Rev, well…he was _everywhere_. The White Revenant streaked across the battlefield, weaving around bullets and shrapnel and targeting the gunnery crews of every tank and artillery piece he ran across as the helicopters overhead chased the Batman's Javelin. He vibrated through the armor of each operable tank he found, snatching up the key crew—driver and gunner—then carrying them outside and slamming their heads into the ground.

Meanwhile, Wonder Woman and TK carved through the infantry and armor they supported, slashing weapons and critical systems as they fought back to back. Diana kicked one soldier into a tank whose treads were falling off, and Jason intercepted another tank that was trying to level its .50 at her back, using his shield to tip it over with a flying slam. Gunfire from three directions lanced at him, his right bracer and shield moving to stop it until a blue-red blur toppled the shooters and came to a stop, her body flashing with bullet ricochets. Supergirl turned to him without a care for the rounds hitting all over her body and marched over to him.

"Uh, Kara, um—" Jason sputtered, raising his shield higher and higher as the ricochets got closer and closer to him.

Kara rolled her eyes and turned a glare on the infantry and armor peppering her body. That glare turned into a blast of heat vision that slagged their weapons, the red in her eyes fading to her normal baby blues as she turned back to him.

"So this is your idea of a third date?"

Jason almost laughed. "You said you'd been on _worse_ dates than our first."

Kara grinned toothily. "Touché." She snapped an arm up in tandem with him to keep incoming fire out of her eyes, sending him a sideways smile. "Talk later, 'kay babe?"

Jason stared at her, blinking twice, then pulled off his helmet and lunged at her lips-first, his shield ensuring the privacy of their moment. She hummed and whined into his mouth, eyes slipping shut as he prolonged it—probably longer than it should've been—her left hand curling around his cowled head and keeping him pressed to her. They broke apart with a quiet smack that was drowned out in the hailstorm of gunfire all around them, both their faces red as a cherry and smiling.

"More of that, later," he said firmly.

Kara bit her lower lip, nodding excitedly.

Batman's voice on comms. interrupted their moment. "This attack doesn't make sense."

"Based on what?" Caden returned. "Bialya makes its living on government-perpetrated terrorism."

"There's a secret nuclear power plant just a few miles outside the city," Supergirl said amidst flipping a pair of tanks by their main barrels. "They take that out, they'll nuke the Quracis with their own regime's tech."

Cass chimed in. "Perhaps it's a failsafe in case their manual incursion doesn't work."

"In that case," Wonder Woman said, grunting with effort, "we need to get a team over there to make sure it's secure."

"The Lanterns, Supergirl, Wonder Woman, and I will stay on the battlefield to drive their army back," Batman said. "We're the best equipped to deal with these numbers. The rest of you, I'm sending coordinates to the main entrance of that plant. Get in there and stop whatever they're planning. The League—and this city—are counting on you."

TK snorted as he landed next to Caden. "Well shit, as long as there's no pressure."

"I've got Black Bat if you grab the Ghost," Rev said.

Jason glanced at Caden. "Ghost?"

His brown eyes rolled. "The League of Assassins gave me that name a _long_ time ago."

He nodded and outstretched his arms. "Shall we?"

Caden shrugged and sighed, bracing himself for rapid ascension. Two sonic booms sounded moments later, moving to the mountain north of Karbala, the sound lost in the deafening roar of the battle that raged on and on.

* * *

AN: Whoaaaakay, this took me absolutely _forever_ to write thanks to school being a right pain. Dealing with interviews and appointments and family matters and—well, it's done, and this arc will be closed out by the next chapter. I'm hoping to get to that ASAP; I just wanted to let you guys know that I'm still kicking and still writing this story. Life has just been getting in the way.

If some pieces of this chapter seem out of place or choppy, I apologize. I wrote like the first half of this chapter back in July, then came back to it today, so there might be some discrepancies I didn't account for. It happens every time I revisit a story after a while. Just let me know in the comments if you run across anything like that.

Hope you enjoyed this newest entry and are looking forward to more. Next chapter will focus on the other half of the team, so stay tuned for the next chapter.

Drake out.

Musical Inspirations:

Crisis on Earth-X – The Flag Still Stands: 2:05-end—breaking into power plant/Achilles hums

Batman: Arkham Origins – Bane: The Tomorrow Knight and Caden vs Bane

Wonder Woman – No Man's Land – start-0:46—radar/approaching force/opening volley, 0:46-1:40—Alex intervenes/missile defense/forced to ground, 1:40-2:20—buckling/living hope/bunker buster, 2:20-3:08—the Justice League arrives/reinforcing the barrier, 3:08-5:37—League and Vagabonds together/Supergirl lands, 5:37-6:05—Kara and Jason/"later", 6:05-7:10—plan of action/splitting up/end of chapter


	4. The Vagabonds I: Fallout

"Lord Achilles, motion trackers at the south gate report new entry."

Behind his inscribed mask, Achilles' dark eyes narrowed. "I take it you wouldn't tell me this unless it was important."

His lieutenant tipped his head in assent. "There appear to be four of them—American operatives, at least two metas…and _him_." He handed Achilles a tablet showing the security feed of that entrance.

His gaze darted over the grainy feed, seeing four figures stride through the door a second or two before a gunshot rendered the feed nothing more than static. He rewound the recording to the instant before the shot landed and froze it, the still frame showing the muzzle flash illuminating a familiar Sig .45—and the face of its owner.

"Well I'll be damned," Achilles grated through his mask. "I've finally drawn you out."

"What do we do, sir?"

He blinked, thinking for a moment. "Continue as ordered. Initiate the meltdown as soon as everything is in place and ensure there is no turning back, then report to your exits."

"Yes, sir."

The rest of the mercs—who bore the same circle-within-crescent patch as Bane's men—ran from the room to their apportioned tasks while their captain snapped both arm-blades to full length and absently spun them like rotors. Aside from the dull hum of machinery, whir of his blades, and periodic dripping of blood from the dozen or so corpses scattered about; the only sound in the room was his humming until his mask permitted a few soft, grating words.

"First blood is mine, brothers. May the best freak win."

…

"First point of business once we're inside: control room." Caden grunted softly as Jason dropped him the last ten feet to the ground once they reached the outskirts of the reactor grounds. "If they want to trigger a meltdown, they'll need administrative staff to—"

He stopped short at the cluster of bodies just outside the doors, desert fatigues stained with blood and practically shredded with bullets. Caden gulped and pursed his lips.

"Well, I guess they're here."

Black Bat ran a scan over the bodies, her frown audible behind the mask. "These bodies are old, by well over an hour."

"That's long before the main force was slated to arrive," Rev pointed out.

"Nuclear meltdowns aren't explosive," TK said. "They take time to set off while allowing the cause to reach minimum safe distance." He glanced at Caden while sweeping the mountain with a penetrating sonar scan. "This is starting to look less like a failsafe and more like plan A."

Drake shook his head and picked up one of the guards' fallen rifles, tucking an extra mag into his tactical belt. "Either way, we need to get inside." He conducted a press check to ensure there was a round in the chamber before hefting the rifle and pressing inward.

"I've got the schematics," Luke said, showing a holographic interface on his left arm.

Jason stared at the projection, wondering what other tech was in that nanite suit.

"I can find the control room and clear it out before you even get there."

Caden frowned. "Risky, but if you've been in the game this long, you can handle yourself. Do it."

He nodded and took off in a flash of silver lightning.

Drake glanced at Cass. "Do you trust him?"

"He's given us no reason not to," she answered, "but that's hardly going to change your perspective, is it?"

He didn't reply, just kept pressing forward. Jason's stomach turned with every corpse they passed, seemingly in worse and worse conditions. One hallway was clustered with bodies piled four feet high like a mass grave, and he felt himself wretch until he caught it. Over an hour old, and the ground was coated in a layer of drying blood ten feet wide. A near-imperceptible tightening of Caden's grip around his weapon drew his attention to the fact that his trigger discipline had slipped—his index was teasing over the trigger threateningly, and his features were a stony mask.

Jason had seen death before, witnessed it happen firsthand, but save for investigations, he'd never stuck around for the aftermath—and certainly not to this scale. He could only imagine how much the two standing with him had seen, and wondered briefly how they were still sane. Considering they were two "powerless" humans walking into a war zone with relatively little in the way of backup or protection, a case could be made that they weren't. As his family—extended, adopted, or not—Jason couldn't help wondering what that said about _him_.

…

_Finally._

Rev's mental exclamation followed hours of playing by the rules of his new…friends? Teammates? Allies of convenience? Meh, he'd figure it out later. Right now, he was about to throw down with some terrorists, stop a meltdown, and save a city. Again. Dear sweet Rao, how many times had he done this? The specifics changed; the premise did not. At least this wasn't a backwards world like the one with Uxas Magnus—_that_ had been an awkward conversation. Logging that away with another thousand errant thoughts, Lucas finally let his body _move_ for the first time since that alley in San Fran.

That was always his pet peeve whenever playing with others, having to _slow down_. Absent that restriction…

The wind whipping against his masked face made him grin despite the increasingly grisly scenes he passed on the way to the control room. Smirking malevolently, he saw a security door in his way and stopped just outside before ramming his shoulder into it just hard enough to make a threatening bang. The telltale clicks of a dozen guns training on the door answered a moment later.

A tense hush fell over the control room as the mercs inside arranged themselves around the door in a fan pattern. None of them saw the silvery-white figure that phased into the room through a wall on the opposite side, a predatory smile on his lips the whole time. That smile turned feral as he showed teeth and vibrated his arm through the rearmost merc's chest, keeping the part of the limb inside him out of phase while his hand and forearm went solid. He coughed and gasped at the strange sensation, dropping his gun into Rev's waiting hand, but would be fine—unless his comrades decided to gun him down.

Rev decided not to wait and see, raising the gun one-handed and opening up on them, two rounds apiece. Center mass, heaviest armor, but he hadn't anticipated that they were using tungsten-tipped rounds—armor-piercing. The bullets tore through them like tissue paper, some no doubt perforating numerous blood vessels and critical organs. Sighing, he pulled his hand from the man's chest and smacked him over the back of the head with his own gun. The other eleven gasped in various states of injury. The nanites in his mask altered the clear lenses over his eyes, showing a scan of their vitals and injuries.

The rounds had gone straight through flesh, bone, and armor; and he quickly triaged the worst injuries. Both hands vibrated until electricity began sparking off them at sporadic intervals. Frowning, he focused a little harder until the energy field around his palms stabilized. It had been a while since he'd done this, and he cursed himself for being so careless. He approached the most critically injured first, the man gasping at him wide-eyed, terrified. Rev sighed and trapped him in place with one hand on either side of the holes in him. His gasps intensified as his body's natural healing process was suddenly accelerated over the local area, until the shredded liver and tissue beneath Rev's hands sealed shut.

He kneed him in the face a second later.

The process was repeated with the remaining critically injured, leaving Luke winded and not a small bit annoyed with his fatigue. He was _so_ out of practice with this aspect of his powers, though perhaps that was for the best since he hadn't had to mend such extensive wounds in a while. When it was finally done and they were unconscious, he tapped his earpiece.

"Control room clear."

"Copy," Caden answered. "We're almost there."

Rev would've tied them down as well, but he didn't carry restraints on him—and apparently neither did they. Whoever these mercs were, they didn't take prisoners. It took the others another thirty seconds to arrive, and when they did, all eyes were immediately drawn to the blood spatters on the walls.

Luke shrugged. "Was like that when I got here," he lied, noting that Black Bat's eyes lingered on him a moment longer than the rest.

Still, she said nothing.

Luke absently noted that with a final glance her way before going to check the other doors for signs of movement. Caden was hovering over an array of controls and dials, scanning them with intense eyes. He flicked several security feeds and pilfered one of the mercs' tablets, using his fingerprint to open it. His wide-eyed gasp a few seconds later was _not_ a good sign.

"What's wrong?" asked Black.

"The meltdown…it's already begun."

All eyes immediately snapped to him as he flicked his finger over the screen.

"These guys, they call themselves the Myrmidons—global-spanning mercenaries with a short but bloody track record. And the kind of technical know-how usually reserved for think-tanks." Caden grimaced. "They started removing safeguards well over an hour ago, sabotaging cooling, removing the fuel rods from shielded sections…"

"The meltdown _definitely_ wasn't plan B," Knight said grimly. "The attack was just a distraction."

Caden nodded. "That's not all. They planted small thermobaric bombs all over the facility to accelerate the process and spread the radiation faster. Basically turned this entire installation into a giant dirty bomb." He checked one of the mercs' watches. "And apparently we have a little over seven minutes before they go off."

"That doesn't make any sense," Rev interrupted. "The Bialyans came here mostly on the ground, and I didn't see any kind of rad-shielding tech on them. If those bombs go off, _they'll_ be caught in the radius too."

"I'm not sure these guys care," Jason said. "Or Queen Bee herself, for that matter. The soldiers are all just cannon fodder, and any equipment or armor they leave behind can be retrieved by a team of specialists later."

"Besides," Black Bat added, "what better way to terrify the populace than by showing you have as little regard for your own troops as you do for your enemy?"

It was a good ten seconds before someone spoke.

"How do we stop it?" TK asked.

Drake frowned at the dials and security monitors showing the various thermobaric bombs. "I don't know. I…" his head shook, "I'm not sure we can."

"There has to be _something_," Cass insisted.

Caden frowned harder, pulling out his PDA and swiping over the screen, which was littered with schematics—a data upload from Batman. A glance from Rev verified that Batman had managed to get his hands on the technical layout of this place.

Rev's lips pursed. "If we had some xenothium, this wouldn't be an issue."

TK glanced at him inquisitively.

"If I could swap the core of one of those bombs with xenothium, this place would still go up, but the radiation would be neutralized."

Cass's gaze snapped to him. "You know where we can find some?"

He snorted. "Not on _this_ Earth, not in the time we have," his voice lowered to a mutter, "and I'm sure as hell not going back to mine."

Suddenly, something lit up Caden's eyes. "Wait—it can't be—that's it!"

"What?" TK asked, excited. "What'd you find?"

He turned to Jason. "We can't _stop_ the meltdown, but we _can_ redirect it." He tapped something on the PDA, activating some kind of holoprojector built into the base. "The people who built this place put in safety shutters all over the facility in the case of a radiation leak. Obviously, they're not meant to contain something of this magnitude, but if we can close all but one—the one that vents heat upward through the mountain—we can direct the radiation outflux _upward_ instead of outward."

"Okay, so?" Rev asked. "Even if the blast wave sends the radiation skyward, far from Karbala, it still gets vented into the atmosphere."

Caden grinned, all teeth. "Unless we give it a direct pathway to go even further."

Knight's eyes widened. "The Lanterns."

His fingers snapped. "Exactly." He tapped his earpiece. "Batman, this is Ghost."

"Go ahead."

"Any chance you can spare one of the Lanterns? The meltdown's already in effect, but if we can form a tunnel around the main cooling vent, we can direct the radiation into space."

"Wait-wait-wait—you want one of us to make a tunnel all the way to _space_?" Alex asked incredulously. "I know I've got some juice, but even I can't—"

"You can," Hal interrupted. "You're capable of so much more than you think, and you won't be alone. Batman, I'm going with him."

"Agreed," Wonder Woman chimed in. "The Quraci military rallied after the initial attack and came to back us up. Supergirl, Batman, and I can hold the tide; but if that bomb goes off…"

"All this will be for nothing," Batman finished.

"Got it," Alex said uneasily. "We're on our way."

Caden tapped his earpiece to cut the connection.

"So what do we need to activate the shutters?" Rev asked. "Can't be as simple as flicking one of these switches," he added with a wave at the panels.

Drake frowned. "Unfortunately, no." He pulled up the projector again. This time, red dots highlighted six points around the facility. "There are six terminals across the installation. All six need to be activated for me to engage the emergency shutters from here. Once that happens, we'll have maybe sixty seconds to book it outside before the shutters seal us in."

Rev nodded. "I'll take the four furthest ones," he waved to Cass and Jason, "you two take the rest."

They nodded and immediately split off as Rev booked it to the far ends of the facility.

Caden's voice came over their commlink a moment later. "Remember, you'll have sixty seconds to get out once I engage the shutters, so as soon as you hit your switches, run like hell for the nearest exit. They'll be close to the controls."

They each replied in a curt affirmative.

"Move fast, people. We don't have a single moment to spare."

A loud beep sounded over the line, and a glance down at Rev's gauntlet showed a timer mirroring the one on the bombs. Gritting his teeth, he put extra urgency into his steps and plowed through the first dozen hired guns in his way before they could even blink.

…

The "close" switch would've been much easier to reach if there hadn't been a small army of mercs between the control room and the failsafe. They'd apparently had a similar idea about the failsafe Caden had proposed, because the corridors leading to the shutter controls were divided into makeshift checkpoints. The checkpoints themselves didn't slow Black Bat down; finding a way around them was the tricky bit. Because of the sheer volume of the base and the risk of rock erosion clogging the air flow, the vents were more than large enough to permit her passage all the way to the shutter room, at which point the real work began.

The Myrmidons were smart enough not to rely solely on the checkpoints to secure their objective (though why any of them were even still in the building given the imminent detonation was beyond her comprehension), but also put a squad of five in the room itself. She counted at least one semi-auto shotgun and mostly automatics for the rest, including a light machine gun that would do nasty things—and already had, based on the bloodstains scattered across the room. The mercs at the church and warehouse had been using armor-piercing rounds, so she couldn't even trust her suit to hold up to more than a few shots. Not that it mattered; her gear had never been of much importance to begin with.

It was just a matter of gauging their abilities and likely responses, then planning accordingly.

And on the matter of bloodstains, there was something off about the control room. Everything about Rev's body language screamed tension and unease, and the blood spatters were consistent with where the mercs were lying, not any bodies that may have occupied it before. Based on the look of the shutter room, it looked like the Myrmidons had already cleaned out the old bodies or at least stacked them somewhere else, so it was possible those stains had been there all along. Her instincts said Rev was lying, and they weren't usually wrong. It wasn't as if she'd never worked with people willing and able to use lethal force. Hell, she was working with Alex and Caden…not to mention Jason, whose first act in this time was trying to assassinate someone.

But despite none of the mercs actually being dead, Luke had lied about it. The tension, the unease, the hesitation of his usually fluid movements…they all spoke of a deep-seated shame. It was something she was more than familiar with. After all, Cass had seen the exact same thing in the mirror for _years_.

With _that _cheery thought, Black Bat leapt down through the grate, having planned her means of attack already, and landed feet-first on the shoulders of the central gunman. Her legs wrapped around his head, body flipping forward to hurl him into two others. The remaining startled pair whirled around, one toting a Benelli M4. She rolled sideways and redirected the other's weapon as it went off, scattering automatic rounds across the ceiling and sending concrete dust filling the air. The shotgunner kept his cool and kept trying to align a decent sight picture. He must've been using slugs instead of buckshot, if he wasn't moving in to get hands-on.

Or maybe waiting for his clearly outmatched comrade to fall, since Black was rapidly deconstructing him via pressure points on his armed wrist and left knee. Using his new kneeling position, Black leapt into the air toward the tangled trio, using his head as a springboard. Her legs and arms tangled around one head each, flipping them as her body kept twisting, planting both on the ground face and chest-first. Black saw the slight twitch of the shotgunner's trigger finger and jerked to the right, his slug tearing a massive hole in the ground as she closed the distance, throwing her arms up in front of her.

With a semi-auto shotgun, the Myrmidon could just aim and pull the trigger, unleashing a hailstorm of high-powered rounds. But with slugs, he needed a solid sight picture and safe backstop, or he'd risk shooting one of his own. Keeping that in mind, she kept zigzagging on her way across the room, maintaining the rest of the Myrmidons as her backstop. When she closed to about six feet, she saw his finger tighten again and threw her arms up, using his stance and approximate sight alignment to predict where his shot was going and move her gauntlets accordingly.

Something like this would never work with an automatic weapon, or probably even a handgun, but the recoil from something like an M4 would throw him off just enough to let her close the distance. The shock of the slug being crushed against her gauntlet slowed her down a half-step. It wasn't enough.

She grabbed the muzzle of his shotgun, shifting it away from her body as he let off another round into the ceiling and she brandished a batarang. It slashed through the barrel a moment before she turned it back and stabbed him in the upper thigh, keeping him from immediately mounting a counter. Black threw two more batarangs behind her, then turned away to shield herself from the blinding flash that ensued. A knee to the face laid her current problem out, prompting her to storm back toward the rest. A split-kick took down two who unholstered their sidearms and waved them blindly in her direction.

Their trigger discipline kept the weapons from going off when they twitched on the way down, and a backfist to the face of a third sent bloody spittle flying. She finished him with a hook-kick to the head that made his legs just give out. The last one standing hefted his LMG to hip level and let it rip, despite still not being able to see. Black managed to use his blindness to approach from flat on the ground, since he was confining his pattern of fire—very steadily in fact—to about chest height, figuring she'd be the only one still standing. It was smart. She was smarter.

An agonized howl from him was cut off by a sudden lack of air from a rising punch to the groin, his gun nearly falling from limp fingers as one hand drifted to shield his sensitive bits. A punch to the throat and shoulder throw laid him out at last, leaving the room clear, for the moment. Black frowned and checked her gauntlet for the bomb timer as a thought occurred to her.

"Drake, how are we going to get the Myrmidons out of here?" she asked as she began looking for the shutter controls.

"Who says we were ever going to?"

She froze mid-movement. "So our plan is to leave them to die?"

"Live by the sword, die by it."

Cass's teeth gritted, but someone else spoke up before she could say anything more.

"Black," Luke said evenly, "as much as I find it distasteful, our priority is Karbala, not these lowlife scum. If I have time once I hit all the switches, I'll run them out myself, but we're not risking anyone's lives to save them from their own devices. Not even ours."

Frowning, Cass gave the unconscious mercs one last glance before returning to her objective.

…

Rev huffed and puffed with exertion as he hit the third of his four switches.

"That's four," Caden said. "Come on, we need the last two."

"Rev, I finished with mine and I'm close to your fourth." Jason sounded a little uneasy. "I'll get it. You extract the mercs."

Luke blinked, checking his HUD and the shutters that still needed activation. Black Bat's was one; his fourth was the other. Frowning, he considered going after it anyway before smiling and activating his earpiece.

"Roger that. Scoot-noot the instant you're done."

"…scoot _what_?"

"Ah…Earth-23 idiom."

"…'kay."

Shaking his head, Rev glanced at the Myrmidons around the shutter room, grabbed two, and sped off toward the nearest exit. Jason's devotion to his sister's ideology was sweet. He just hoped it wouldn't get him killed. Despite their rocky start, there was something…endearing about the kid.

And maybe a pinch too _familiar_.

…

It was a good minute before Cass finally found the failsafe switch, a sharp Malaysian curse leaving her throat at the bare three minutes left. The split-second before her fingers touched the switch, she heard the faintest of whistles behind her and whirled around in a crouch as two metal shards imbedded themselves in the control console. Her eyes widened for several reasons. First, none of the Myrmidons she'd knocked out were still there; and second, the figure who had sent those shards at her was standing by the door in tactical gear with extensive plated armor and a mask that completely concealed his features. The helmet was faceless, not unlike her own, but ornate with gold Greek lettering around the fringes and view-slits that made his eyes look like faintly glinting black pools.

The air-slits at the bottom of the mask emitted faint puffs of visible vapor with every slow breath, and when he spoke, it was with a voice like gravel dragged through broken glass, no doubt electronically altered. That didn't make it any less unsettling.

"I had hoped he would show up himself," he grated, casually strolling toward her, "but I'll settle for _you_, daughter of Cain."

Black's jaw tightened as she glanced at the timer. Barely two and a half minutes before detonation.

"Black, what's going on?" Caden asked.

The momentary distraction threw off her focus just enough for her not to completely avoid the sudden tungsten flechette that flew her way from the intruder's gauntlet. It nailed her in the side of the head, shattering her earpiece and cutting off communication with the rest of the team.

"None of that, darling," the man teased grimly.

Without another word, he rushed forward, Cass hurling a trio of batarangs at various points on his body. His right gauntlet flashed with a silvery glint, and all three weapons fell to the ground in two a moment later, his spring never stuttering. Black Bat dashed to meet him, falling into a slide under his first swipe, that being the first she actually saw of the arm-blade he'd snapped from his gauntlet. A faint _click_ sounded as he retracted it and whirled around, charging at her with a rapid flurry of jabs.

She slapped more than a few aside with difficulty, even his light strikes feeling like they had his entire weight behind them. In the mix, he threw a shin-kick that she met with one of her own, alternating sides with each matching the other blow-for-blow. He sent a one-two at her face, her head bobbing around his blurred fists. Immediately after dodging a right cross, she curled one arm around his outstretched right and kneed him in the chest, following with a headbutt to the seam between his mask and the rest of his helmet. Aside from a faint grunt, he gave no indication that it affected him whatsoever, hooking her in the ribs with his left.

Black staggered back from the sheer force of the punch, leaping backward and drop-kicking him in the chest when he tried to press the attack. His boots skidded across the tiled floor, but he held his ground. Black nipped-up to her feet, eyes flickering to the control console, then back to her opponent. He chuckled and angled his body specifically to block her path.

"You're a fool," she said, pacing sideways. "Your bombs explode soon; we'll both die if we're still here."

She got the distinct impression he was grinning behind that mask when he replied. "_This_ Achilles has no heel to exploit."

Black dashed toward him, juking to the side at the last second and firing her grapnel at the shutter switch right as his arm hooked around her midsection. Despite his interference, the hook managed to snag the switch and his attempt to hurl her away only ended up pulling it. Smirking, Cass cut the line and pistol-whipped him in the head with her grapnel. Snarling, he smacked the gun away and flicked his arm-blade out again, meeting her own as she brought her left arm up to protect her face. Rapid-fire swipes sent sparks flying from her gauntlets as she kept up her defenses.

Achilles lunged at her neck with the blade, pulled back at the last second, then spun clockwise and slashed at her midsection, the edge barely missing when she snapped her hips away. Black Bat reversed directions as soon as the blade passed, lunging at him knee-first and meeting his left palm. He pushed her back and swiped at her face, twitching his wrist and clicking something in his gauntlet. Eyes widening, Cass ducked as another metal shard speared past her face, pushing off her back leg and charging shoulder-first into his midsection. She grunted when he kneed her in the chest, arms around her midsection from above.

Achilles hurled her ribs-first into a nearby console, her pained form rolling over the other side. Hissing through her teeth, she spied her grapnel and the timer on the bombs.

_Dammit…I'm running out of time._

The gun entered her hand, and she shot a line toward the doorway nearest the exit, the reel lending extra speed to her steps until she leapt for it. Achilles caught up to her faster than any human should be able to move in all that gear, grabbing her by the head and flipping her over his shoulder. She rose to a crouch just in time to receive a hard roundhouse to the head that shattered the undamaged side of her mask, leaving the left side of her face completely exposed. Cass leapt into a backward dive-roll, her cowl-frizzed hair falling over her eye and blurring her vision. Gritting her teeth, she fixed her gaze on Achilles, who stalked toward her with menacing steps as he snapped both arms out to his sides. Both his gauntlets suddenly sprouted foot-long blades.

Her eyes widened when they began spinning like propellers and he charged right at her.

…

"That does it!" Caden shouted exultantly. "Shutters engaging! Everyone get the hell out!"

Jason ran like hell, collecting the bodies of the Myrmidons at the final switch on his way out with little care for what else was happening. He had to trust that everyone else would do their job. By the time he reached the outside, there was a mere thirty seconds left on the clock, and Blue and Green Lantern were already in position at the top of the mountain.

"Everyone accounted for?" Caden asked.

TK glanced around the crowd of unconscious or groaning mercs.

_Drake, Rev…wait…_

"Cass," he whispered, summoning a holoprojection of the facility and everyone's locations. "Cass is still in there!"

Jason lunged toward the rapidly closing shutter only to feel a firm push on his chest an instant later as he stared into a pair of intense gray eyes.

"Not for long," said the Revenant.

Then there was a flash of silver lightning, and he was gone.

…

Black Bat had rarely known panic. The last time had been in this part of the world, as Janus steadily crushed her chest cavity while Jason helplessly looked on. Despite fighting with every scrap of strength and skill, she couldn't make a break for it, and the shutters' sixty-second mark had no doubt passed already. She had no way to alert the others to her predicament, and opening the shutters again this late was _not_ an option. Her only consolation, however petty, was that this "Achilles" would be going up in flames with her.

After the first time, she never wanted to kill again, but being blown up by one's own bombs didn't count.

His propeller blades sparked and skidded against her gauntlets as he struck at her almost blindly. Despite his near-frantic movements, she could tell he'd placed every strike precisely, a tactic she found just a little_ too_ familiar. And then there was his knowledge of her history…

Everything about Achilles implied things that, frankly, terrified her in ways she couldn't explain. That, more than anything, was why she could take small comfort that this threat would be null and void after today. Brandishing a batarang in each hand, Black Bat lunged at an incoming strike, finding her blade sheared in half by his, but the impact alone slowed the propeller down just enough to trap it in her arm-blades. A roar came from her throat as she elbowed the base of the blade, breaking it from its mount. Achilles snarled at her as he brought the other blade to bear.

_This _one she just swung at with both arms, some stroke of luck catching his blade between those of her left. She quickly locked it in place with her right, each set of blades hooked around it from opposite sides as she snapped her arms apart. The blade sheared apart with an ear-splitting screech, and she nailed him in the gut with a snap-kick that sent him reeling before he could respond. Sinking to his knees with a groan, Achilles glared at her from behind his helmet, making to lunge at her again when suddenly, the space behind him erupted in a maelstrom of blood and fire. A single armored hand reached out through the maelstrom, landing on Achilles' shoulder.

His body language _screamed_ of frustration and disappointment, but he quickly acquiesced to the hand's urging and stepped back through the portal.

Cass gaped at his exit, suddenly realizing why none of the other Myrmidons had been there when he arrived and feeling a chill pass through her at the implications…

Then she heard an ear-piercing beep from her gauntlet and saw a flashing red _zero_.

Her eyes widened as the entire mountain shook, and she turned around, adrenaline flooding her system and slowing the world to a crawl as the thermobaric flames surged through the halls toward her. Then her feet left the ground, and the breath left her lungs as her insides tilted sideways very suddenly. Beneath the acrid scent permeating the air, she detected hints of aftershave and snapped her eyes upward to see gray eyes engulfed in silver electricity.

"Hang on! I got you!"

…

This was not the first explosion the White Revenant had outrun, and God help him, it would _not_ be the last. Rev pushed his body to the absolute limit as the entire facility was engulfed in fire and deadly radiation. He could feel the heat on his back as he sprinted, his legs numb with exertion. His jaw clenched as his mind ran even faster, recalling the schematics. He beelined for the main coolant tower, essentially what would be the vent if the mountain was a volcano. With the rest of the power plant flooded with death, it was their only shot—and also certain death if he didn't put the pedal to the metal.

So as soon as he phased them into the coolant tower, he landed feet-first in a crouch on the far wall, Cass cradled in his arms. His feet vibrated intensely against the tower wall, lightning sparking up the limbs as he drew power from Earth's rotation, supercharging his speed. He took off an instant before the flames erupted over that spot, rapidly draining his reserves as he streaked toward the aperture at the peak, screaming at the top of his lungs.

Then he took his last step and leapt from the tower in a silvery blur.

His eyes snapped beneath them as his perception accelerated massively. Despite his best efforts, Rev had still put them in the path of the eruption, which would no doubt consume them even if it weren't directed upward per Caden's plan.

Then he felt himself yanked sideways and glanced toward the source to see a flare of blue energy dissipating at the same time a cylinder of pure green exploded into existence over the aperture. A wall of blue reinforced it a moment later, and mid-fall, Luke's eyes widened as the flames spewed up the turquoise tunnel like a dam breaking. Before he even had time to consider how they were going to survive the fall, their motion was arrested by a pair of arms that grabbed him by the shoulders. His grip on Cass failed, and he had a brief moment of panic before he saw the **S** of her rescuer.

When his feet finally touched the ground again, Rev took his first full breath since the jump, leaning heavily on his knees. It took a few seconds (in speedster time, at least) before he realized someone was talking to him.

"Hey, you okay?"

Luke hit the collar of his suit, retracting his cowl and allowing him to feel the desert wind on his face. "Y-Yeah. That was close." He straightened up and playfully jabbed his rescuer in the arm. "Thanks, Jason."

The Knight stared at him with pursed lips, looking almost constipated under that helmet. His eyes flickered to where Black Bat was being looked over by Supergirl, swiftly returning to Luke. "Thank _you_."

Luke nodded with a tiny smile, turning back to the energy tunnel still filled with fire.

"…I'm sorry I punched you into a dumpster."

Lucas arched an eyebrow and turned back to a shamefaced Jason, who had tucked his helmet under one arm. He paused for a second, seemingly thinking it over, then shrugged. "Believe it or not, that's not the worst first impression I've gotten."

Jason huffed and chuckled, shaking his head. "I believe it." He stretched out his empty hand. "Friends?"

Luke glanced at his hand, blinking twice with a frown tugging at his lips. He pushed it back and smiled wider, taking his hand. "Friends."

…

It took a good hour or so to ensure the facility was completely cleansed of radiation and any further hazards, one of the Lanterns effectively engaging a vent system while the other maintained the tunnel to space. Once the Justice League verified the region was radiation and invader-free, they took their leave, assured that Bialya would be unlikely to try something like this again anytime soon. Everyone was then teleported to the Watchtower for… "debriefing."

_Everyone_.

Which was why Cass was brooding, Lucas was downing coffee by the carafe, Alex was acting totally star-struck, Jason was trying very hard not to squirm in his seat, and Caden was just smirking while polishing his guns. On the other side of the table, Bruce and Diana were alternating their disapproving glares between their children and Caden, and Kara was looking torn about who to support.

Looking very much out of his element, Hal cleared his throat and intervened before mud began slinging. "Um…I think we should get the uh…official stuff out of the way first."

"Agreed," Batman agreed with a faint growl to his voice. "How did you five even get involved with Karbala to begin with?"

Apparently sensing the group's tension, Alex stepped in. "Ahem, Jason and Caden came to see me in Atlanta, asking for help in tracking down a…Janus?"

Everyone on the JL's end of the table, minus Hal, immediately fixed Jason with a harsh look.

"…guessing he wasn't supposed to do that?"

Kara, surprisingly, was the first to speak up. "Why didn't you tell us? Tell _me_? I would've signed up with you in a heartbeat."

"And then immediately told my parents," Jason countered. He waved at them. "You can now see the result of that."

"Of _course_ I would've told them! They have a right to know!"

"And we're looking at you like this _because_ you went off without saying anything," Diana added sharply. She glanced at Cass. "And you, young lady, you _especially_ should know better."

Cass visibly flinched and crossed her arms.

"That said," Batman said, "your presence is probably the reason the casualty count isn't in the hundreds, if not thousands. Our intelligence was faulty, hence why we arrived late." He nodded to Alex. "Blue Lantern, your intervention was critical, and you have our thanks."

Alex was visibly restraining a massive grin, nodding firmly. "We had no idea there was even an incoming invasion. I just scanned the globe for any trans-dimensional energy, and it led us to that town."

Bruce frowned and leaned his hands on the table. "So Janus orchestrated the attack. That would make sense, given where he teleported you two." He motioned to Cass and Jason.

Her head shook. "It wasn't him."

All eyes snapped to her.

"Come again?" Jason asked. "The signature was identical; how can you say it wasn't—"

Cass's head shook again. "Back in the plant, the whole reason I was still inside when time ran out, I confronted an operative—their leader, I'd guess. Right before the timer hit zero, a portal opened behind him and someone pulled him in."

"Okay, so?"

She looked at her brother. "So I recognized the magic, and it _wasn't_ Janus'. The energy was completely different, and the way the figure's eyes glowed…" her jaw clenched, "I'd know that bastard anywhere." Her brown eyes met Diana's gaze. "Blood and fire, Diana."

The color drained from Wonder Woman's face as her jaw fell slack. "No…that's impossible, I—"

"I know," Cass interrupted with a nod, "but I saw what I saw, and I could never forget the destruction left in his wake that day."

Diana slumped over in her seat as Bruce put a reassuring hand on her shoulder.

"Um," Luke chimed in between cups, "someone want to clue me in?"

Bruce directed a faint glare at him. "And you are?"

"Luke Carlisle, breacher from Earth-Theta."

The stare continued. "You saved Cass."

He nodded.

Bruce sighed and drew himself up in his chair. "Almost two years ago, the Olympian Pantheon stripped Diana of her powers and invaded Earth, laying waste to everything they came across. On the tail end of that conflict, right before she got them back, Ares landed in Gotham City in a frenzy and took that destruction to a new level of desolation." He snorted. "Even _Olympus_ disapproved of how far he'd gone."

"And as soon as my powers were returned," Diana said through gritted teeth, "I _ended_ him as my first act. Destroyed him with his own power."

"Olympians _are_ notoriously hard to kill," Lucas said. "And you were just getting used to your powers again; I've been there."

Her head shook. "I made sure there was nothing left to regenerate. He _can't_ still be alive."

Caden frowned. "Unless…"

Diana turned to him. "Unless?"

Drake hummed softly, slowly turning his gaze to Jason.

Jason's eyes widened. "Janus."

Caden nodded.

"Janus pulled him to this time."

"If that were true, wouldn't we remember things differently?" Hal asked.

Jason's gaze darted around as he shook his head. "He could look into the past, find the _exact_ moment that Ares was supposedly 'destroyed,' then cause just enough of a distraction for no one to notice that he was gone and _assume_ he was dead."

"Jason," Diana interrupted, "I _incinerated_ Ares. Destroyed him on the molecular level."

"Did you actually _see_ it happen, or was there too much light to tell for sure?"

She stared at him, face paling once more as her lips pressed into a thin line.

"Then we have to assume that our Ares is still kicking around thanks to him."

Caden scowled. "And here I thought we were _done_ with that shit."

"I guess rogue Olympians are gonna be a problem for a while longer," Kara sighed.

"And then there was that operative," Cass said. "The head Myrmidon. He called himself…Achilles?"

Lucas stared at her. "Achilles. Like, you think, the _actual_ Achilles?"

"No, of course not," Diana said. "He's long dead." At everyone's persistent stare, she crossed her arms. "At least he _should_ be. And thirst for battle aside, I doubt he would've agreed to such an underhanded means of victory."

Caden was even more notably silent, and Alex noticed.

"What's up, Cade? That name mean something to you?"

He didn't answer, but slowly turned his gaze to Cass. "Did you sense anything…odd about him? The way he _moved_, I mean."

She frowned. "I'm not sure. There was _something_, but I couldn't put my finger on it at the time."

"What are you thinking, and what's the deal with 'Achilles'?" Jason asked.

Bruce answered for him. "Achilles is the name of the gene therapy that created Caden."

Jason's eyes widened as he snapped back to Drake. "So…what, you think someone restarted the project?"

His dark eyes flashed with rage for a brief moment. "Absolutely not," he spat. "I spent the better part of half a decade making sure no one ever _could_. And try as you might, you can't reverse-engineer it from my DNA either."

Cass sat up. "And yet, there _was_ something familiar about him. The way he fought, it was…_feral_, but directed, every move carefully calculated." She met Caden's eyes. "Now that you mention it, it felt as if I was fighting a dark mirror of _you_."

Now it was _Caden's_ turn to go white as a sheet, head ducking as he brooded in his seat.

"So…what?" Alex asked in confusion. "We're dealing with, like, a clone or something?"

The number of stares he got made him chuckle nervously.

Kara shuddered. "Rao, I _hope_ not."

"Guys, I was _kidding_."

"And yet," Caden admitted, "you just might've hit it right on the head."

"…seriously?"

"Blue," Hal said, "you're sitting in a space station with two demigods, an alien, a guy who can warp space-time by _running_, and a woman whose first language is _body language_. Evil clones are just another Tuesday."

Alex gulped and leaned back in his seat. "Jeez."

"Whatever the case," Batman said, "despite the fact that you were never supposed to be there in the first place—"

"Dad," Jason protested.

"—you all did an exemplary job." He cracked the tiniest of smiles. "Now, go home and get some rest. All of you."

Jason sighed and nodded, helping Cass to her feet when she seemed reluctant to stand. Given how beat-up her armor was, he could only imagine the aches and pains she'd be feeling in the morning. As they made their way to the teleporters, he heard fast, light steps approaching from the side and turned just in time for Kara to glomp him from the side. He chuckled and hugged her back as best he could, keeping one arm around her shoulders when they separated.

"I'm going home and sleeping _immediately_," he said. "The lectures can wait 'til morning."

Kara giggled. "I hear _that_. I know what it's like to be on the receiving end of just _one_ of those two." She nodded at Diana and Bruce, who had stayed behind in the conference room. "But both at once?" Her head shook. "I do _not_ envy you, Jace."

He chuckled and tugged her into his side a little more firmly. She looked up at him quizzically, that eye contact tugging at something inside him. "Hmm…you know…we did make plans for when we were done…"

Kara blinked up at him blankly for just an instant before her lips curled in a grin that was pure mischief. "Follow me, Mr. Wayne…"

Jason considered it just about pure luck that no one else currently on the station had super hearing…or X-ray vision, because getting caught making out on the roof of the Daily Planet was one thing. Getting caught making out in Hawkgirl's room because it was the first unoccupied space within reach would be something else entirely. Though if they were being honest, Shayera would probably _give_ them the space, since she was one of Kara's most vocal supporters after the breakup. Still, they knew they didn't have long before they'd be missed, so after a few minutes of cuddling and gratuitous hickeys, they stepped out of the room with only slightly disheveled hair. Which they very much hoped could be blamed on the battle.

Hal's knowing smirk as he passed them in the halls said otherwise.

…

"Talk about a crash course in Earth-1!"

Cass turned to the speaker, the rescuer she had yet to thank. "Stopping a nuclear fallout on your first day _is_ a little extreme."

"Hm?" Luke looked at her with a blank stare. "No, not that." He waved dismissively. "Like Hal said, it's just another Tuesday for me."

She arched an eyebrow.

"I mean the whole history lesson, about Caden and the Olympus War. And this Janus guy. Sounds like a real piece of work."

Cass flinched and absently touched a hand to her chest. "He is."

Lucas silently observed her motion, clearing his throat. "Anyway, I'd best find someplace to hang my head for the night. Based on what was said in there, I doubt Janus is going away anytime soon, so…should probably plan for an extended stay."

"That check of yours should give you the resources you need to put down roots anywhere."

"Oh, I know, I'm just…conflicted about just where that should be."

Cass shrugged. "Where do you usually go?"

"When I visit somewhere new?" He shrugged. "Wherever's closest to the action, I guess. I mean technically I could live _anywhere_, since, you know, _speedster_; but…"

"You want to be close to the action."

A nod.

"Then you're probably best off sticking to the East Coast." Cass frowned. "For some reason, Janus is fixated on Jason, and I wouldn't put it past him to attack Jason directly."

"Huh."

When they reached the teleporter room, they saw Alex and Caden there already, the former rather animated and the latter…getting there.

"Wait, so…I never knew this about you." Alex's eyes narrowed at the other man. "You've _never_ gotten laid?"

"Nope," Caden replied with just a touch of smugness on his lips. "Not once."

Alex glanced away and stage-muttered, "Suddenly, everything about you makes _so _much more sense."

Drake deadpanned and smacked the side of his head.

Alex grinned and chuckled, rubbing his head.

Another door opened, permitting Jason and Kara to join the others. Cass took note of the extra red in their faces and the slight tension in their stance, eyebrows steadily climbing upward until Jason caught her look and glared mildly. She smirked and shook her head.

"So that was a…well, _mostly_ bust," Caden said once Jason was in earshot.

"In hunting for Janus, yes," Jason admitted. "But now we know more about the resources at his command."

Alex nodded. "The Myrmidons and Achilles, Bane and his crew, the Bialyan government, and now the god of war, apparently."

"Yeah," Kara said, frowning.

Jason squeezed her shoulder, falling silent for a good while. "Athena was right. I can't do this alone." His lips pursed as his gaze flickered over the rest of the group. "You guys…really don't owe me anything. I roped you into this and you all almost got blown up. Twice. Well, 'cept you, Kara. But…if you want to go your separate ways, I understand completely." His lips pursed. "I wouldn't want to piss off a time god either."

"Kid," Caden sighed, "you can stop with the woe is me act. I don't think anyone in this room was scared off by the events of today, and even if we were, Janus has proven he's not the kind of Olympian we can trust."

"Especially if he decided that enlisting Ares was a good idea," Cass added.

"That too," Drake agreed.

"So no," Alex added, "we're not going anywhere. Well, I mean, we _are_. We all still have our lives to live, but—"

"He knows what you mean."

The room was silent for a bit.

"So…" Kara shifted in place, "how do we do this? Create a Facebook group?"

"I'm sure I could put some appropriate WayneTech together," Jason said. "Keep us all in touch."

"What, group text isn't good enough?" Lucas asked, tongue-in-cheek.

Jason snorted a laugh. "I meant for more than communication. The Justice League has its own problems, and I know they'll help where they can, my parents especially."

"But there are smaller-scale problems that are handled better by people with lower profiles," Cass said.

"Which is where we come in," Luke said with no small amount of excitement. "I like where this is going. So what, we're like the third rendition of the Outsiders or something?"

"Nope," Caden said, "third rendition already exists, and I don't think they have room for six more."

"Aww…"

"But that's kinda the point, isn't it?" Kara asked. "We're all…out of place. We don't _fit _anywhere." She waved to herself. "I mean, I'm a Leaguer, yeah, but…" she frowned, "I was a late arrival, and I've kinda always felt like I'm in Kal's shadow here."

Jason rubbed her arm reassuringly.

Alex hummed and thought for a bit. "So we're like…vagabonds?"

Kara smiled. "Exactly."

"Vagabonds," Luke said slowly, tasting the word. "It has a ring to it."

The room fell silent as each of them considered the implications of their mission, Cass unintentionally reminding herself of the near-death experiences she'd had in the last few weeks alone. When she glanced around, she could see each of the others having similar moments of their own.

"I'm not buying us our own club house though," Jason said suddenly. "I know myself; I'm competitive, and one-upping a space station will _not_ fit in my trust fund."

The room erupted into laughter a moment later, thoroughly breaking the tension, and even Caden cracked a grin at that.

When they all calmed, it was silently agreed that it was time to teleport back to Earth. One by one, they stepped onto the pads and vanished from existence. Right as Kara laid in her own coordinates, she turned and pulled Jason in for one last kiss that left him thoroughly flustered.

A smile quirked Cass's lips until she remembered the speedster at her side, watching their exchange with unveiled glee.

"Hey Luke?"

He turned to her with a small hum. "What's up?"

Cass observed him silently for a second, mentally replaying their interactions over the past day. Finally, she cracked a shy smile and passed a hand through her hair. "Thanks."

Then she stepped onto the pad as Jason laid in the coordinates for the Batcave and turned to see Lucas staring at her appraisingly. His head cocked just slightly before a faint smile quirked his lips. Then the Zeta beams engulfed her body, and she left the station just moments before Luke began muttering to himself.

"Maybe I'll try Gotham this time."

…

Diana felt her stomach churning haphazardly even when they got back to the manor and she laid back in bed. Bruce joined her a few minutes later, frowning at her deteriorated mood.

"Love, usually I'm the one brooding."

Her forlorn state didn't so much as shake. "Ares, Bruce. Ares is alive."

He sighed and tucked in next to her. "I know."

"We should've been done with this. _I _should've been done with this."

"I know."

"And now…" her eyes pricked as she ran a hand across her stomach, "Bruce, our children…"

His arms looped around her neck. "I _know_. There's nothing we can do but prepare for the worst." He frowned. "Which is why I'm going to ask you to do something, and you're not gonna like it."

Her blue eyes snapped to his, a sharp look sent his way. "You want me out of the field."

His lips pursed tightly.

"Bruce," she said, agitated as she sat up, "this is _Ares_."

"And _you're_ not alone."

"The League couldn't take him down the last time—"

"The League also had an entire pantheon's worth of trouble to deal with. We were spread thin, Diana." Bruce's head shook. "Now we're not. And I can't stand by and let you put yourself—and our son—in danger like this because you think you're the only one for the job."

"That wouldn't stop _you_," Diana countered caustically.

To her surprise, Bruce smiled ruefully as he cupped her face. "No. But _you_ did. Remember?"

Diana stopped short, whatever biting comment she had ready dying on her lips. She remembered, all right. The night Bane, Hush, and Hugo Strange laid waste to Gotham. The night she came to help, and he screamed at her to leave. The night she said no until his rejection became repentance. He would have fought them all himself, without her, without Caden, without _Robin_ even. And he would've killed himself, or worse—been reduced to a mere shell of the great man she had always known him to be.

Releasing a breath that was somewhere between a sigh and a sob, she curled into Bruce's arms and laid her cheek on his shoulder.

"Okay," she whispered. "I'll stay out of the field."

"You promise?"

Diana huffed a watery laugh and reached under the nightstand, wrapping the Lasso of Truth around her wrist. "I trust you, I love you…and I will leave this in your hands so I can look after our child."

Bruce smiled and kissed her forehead, then her lips, and gripped the other end of the golden cable. "And I'll keep you up to date on any new developments as soon as they come. Okay?"

She smiled and kissed his lips. "Okay."

He nodded and snatched the Lasso away, tossing it carelessly on the floor. "Now sleep. I'm exhausted."

Diana chuckled and cuddled up to his chest, letting her eyes drift shut with an incomparable warmth permeating every inch of her.

…

An eruption of fire and blood lit up the dimly lit concrete room.

A figure standing over the table in the lit section smirked, never taking his eyes off the items laying on its surface. Stomping steps came from the eruption, the maelstrom roiling with a dull roar until it vanished at last.

"Say it."

A growl was the initial answer.

"Saaaaay it."

The steps ceased with a particularly loud stomp, the newcomer slowly turning toward the source of the voice and replying at the top of his lungs. "_You were right_!"

Janus' smirk widened, his golden eyes twinkling with smug mischief. "There, was that so hard?" He finally looked up from the table and met Ares' boiling gaze. "Now that you've gotten _that_ out of your system, our partnership will be running much more smoothly I hope?"

It wasn't really a question, and by the clench of his jaw, Ares knew it. "Yes," he growled.

"Excellent," Janus replied with a nod and a clap. "Now, unfortunately, the next stage will be…" he winced, "_delicate_. I trust you'll have a tight leash on your dog while the fox takes over?"

Ares rolled his shoulders, seeming to calm a bit. "Achilles will do his part, as will Adonis."

Janus tilted his head and shrugged. "Yes, I suppose the former's failure is hardly _his_ fault. Even the _best_ actors' performance falls flat given an…inferior script."

Ares' jaw tightened.

Janus' taunting air vanished in an instant. "Nevertheless, this is a most critical stage and requires more finesse than your usual tactics. Can I rest knowing that Adonis is up to the task?"

"You can, though I'm unsure why Star City is of such vital importance to…" he waved at the table, "whatever it is you have planned."

Janus smiled, snapping his fingers—and a metallic chess bishop into existence. "As a god of war, surely you understand the importance of seeing the bigger picture." A sigh. "Sadly, this is one case when you knowing all the pieces can only backfire—and that is not a slight on your abilities." His lips pursed tightly. "Time is simply…not your purview." His eyes flickered to Ares'. "Can you trust me then, as you did once?"

Ares stared at him, frowning. "A favor for a debt, Janus. As you said, that's all this is." He turned away, walking toward a new portal. "No trust needed for that."

Janus silently watched him go, the faintest trace of pain in his golden eyes as the portal closed behind him. He leaned back over his project on the table, stopping mid-motion when he felt a chill creep up his spine. His gaze scanned over the room, looking for the eyes he felt on him, and for a moment, he stared at one spot to the west.

The feeling passed an instant later, and with a frown, he returned to his work.

…

Jason's lips twisted into a faint grin as he read from his phone.

[Remember, it's next Sunday.]

His fingers rapidly typed out a reply. [I'll be there, Kara. How much do you have to move?]

[Not much. The apartment has a great view, but it's not huge. Just the essentials.]

[Shouldn't be much of a bother to fly it all then.]

[Nope]

[Then dinner after?]

[Absolutely. :)]

[Can't wait. :D]

[Hey, text me if you need me to come kiss your boo-boos better.]

He chuckled. [Kara, you know I heal faster now.]

[I meant from the inevitable lecture. :P]

[DX I dun wanna think about it]

[Good niiiiight]

[Night, Kara]

Jason set his phone down by his bedside, staring at the ceiling for a good while. His eyes gradually drifted shut, his thoughts fluttering over his experiences—past and future—with Kara. Unconsciously, a smile spread over his face as he hovered somewhere between two dreams. Her face smiled back at him behind his eyelids, her hair fluttering in a wind from nowhere. That flutter suddenly halted—no, slowed, like a fly in amber, and her eyes blinked slowly. His entire body thrummed in a surge of something familiar, something that flooded over him like a torrent. Then her eyes opened, and he froze when her face vanished, and the baby blues that had been staring back at him turned to pure metallic gold.

Jason shot up from his bed with a gasp, so utterly preoccupied with his "dream" that he just barely noticed the wind from nowhere in his own room.

Or the fading silvery runes on his body.

* * *

AN: Sorry for the wait guys. I thought finishing with school would free up some time, but between a temp job search and moving, I got so caught up and demoralized that it took forever to get my groove back.

This just about wraps up the first story arc of _Vagabonds_, establishing all our main characters (well, our main protagonists anyway) and setting up more stuff for the future. I haven't fully ironed out what happens next, so it might take a while before you see another update, but this should be a decent let-off point for now.

Hope you enjoyed the chapter and are looking forward to more.

Drake out.

Musical Inspirations:

The Dark Knight Rises – The Shadows Betray You: meltdown in progress/figuring the failsafe/Black out/extracting the mercs

John Wick – Assassins: Black Bat vs Achilles

Overwatch – Victory: start-0:30—"That's it!"/"Not for long", 0:30-1:11—Achilles routed/portal/detonation, 1:11-1:37—"I got you!"/mad dash/out the spout, 1:37-end—Blue and Green/apology/friends


End file.
